Clint SmithSpeaker and Booking Agent Information

Clint Smith is an American writer, poet, educator, and staff writer at The Atlantic. Born and raised in New Orleans, he evacuated to Houston during Hurricane Katrina. He graduated from Davidson College with a B.A. in English and earned a Ph.D. in Education from Harvard University, where his research focused on incarcerated youth. Smith is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller “How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America” (2021), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and was named one of the top books of 2021 by the New York Times. The book explores how slavery is remembered at historic sites across the U.S. and abroad. His poetry collections include “Counting Descent” (2016) and “Above Ground” (2023), both winners of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award. A former high school English teacher and National Poetry Slam champion, Smith hosts the Crash Course Black American History YouTube series. His essays and poems appear in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere.