Danez Smith Biography
Danez Smith is a poet, author, and performer. Smith is a founder member of Dark Noise Collective, alongside Fatimah Asghar, Franny Choi, Nate Marshall, Aaron Samuels, and Jamila Woods.
How old is Danez Smith?- Age
He was born and raised in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in the United States of America.
Danez Smith Family- Education
Smith was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and went to Central High. They were raised by their mother and grandparents in the Selby neighborhood. Their family comes from Mississippi and Georgia. Smith was a First Wave Urban Arts Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he received his BA in 2012.
Danez Smith Partner- Spouse
Smith is genderqueer and uses they/them pronouns.
Danez Smith Career
Smith is a founder member of Dark Noise Collective, alongside Fatimah Asghar, Franny Choi, Nate Marshall, Aaron Samuels, and Jamila Woods. Smith and Jamila Woods performed with Macklemore on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in February 2016. Their writing has appeared in Poetry (magazine) and Ploughshares. On March 30, 2017, Smith was the first speaker in the Alexander Lawrence Posey Speaker Series at the University of Central Oklahoma. Smith is the author of three books. Boy received the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, with juror Chase Twitchell characterizing Smith’s poetry as “remarkable for its nervy, surprising, morally urgent poems. Boy was also named the Boston Globe’s Best Poetry Book of 2014.
Smith’s second book, Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems, was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award in Poetry. Their third book, Homie, was nominated for both the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the 2021 NAACP Image Award for Poetry. Smith is also the author of two chapbooks: hands on yo knees (2013, Penmanship Books) and black movie (2015, Button Poetry), which won the Button Poetry Prize. Smith has twice reached the final round of the Individual World Poetry Slam.[16] They were finalists in 2011 and finished second in 2014. Smith and Franny Choi co-host the Poetry Foundation’s poetry podcast VS. Smith received a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts grant.
In 2018, the Poetry Society of America awarded Smith’s sonnet sequence “summer, somewhere” the inaugural Four Quartets Prize. Smith, 29, became the youngest recipient of the £10,000 Forward Prize for finest poetry collection with Don’t Call Us Dead, beating out pieces by U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith and former Forward winner Vahni Capildeo. Smith serves on the board of directors at Split This Rock, a poetry non-profit based in Washington, D.C. Smith published Homie, her third poetry collection, in 2020. Homie earned the 2021 Minnesota Book Award for Poetry.
Danez Smith Net Worth
Smith has an estimated net worth of $2,583,295 dollars.
