Patricia Smith is the author of seven books of poetry, including Incendiary Art (2017), poems about Emmett Till, which won an NAACP Image Award, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for poetry; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (2012), which won the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Blood Dazzler (2008), a chronicle of the human and environmental cost of Hurricane Katrina which was nominated for a National Book Award; and Teahouse of the Almighty, a 2005 National Poetry Series selection.
Smith's contribution to the crime fiction anthology Staten Island Noir, which she edited, won the Robert L. Fish Award from the Mystery Writers of America for the best debut story of the year and was chosen for Best American Mystery Stories 2013.
She is a 2014 Guggenheim fellow, a 2012 fellow at both MacDowell and Yaddo, a two-time Pushcart Prize winner, and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition’s history.