In Memoriam: Rod Smith, Editor of Shenandoah and Adjunct Professor of English Smith served as the literary magazine’s editor for 23 years.

W&L News Office
January 14, 2025

R. T. “Rod” Smith, adjunct professor of English at Washington and Lee University and former editor of Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review, died at his home in Rockbridge County, Virginia, on Dec. 22, 2024. He was 77.

Smith was born on April 13, 1947, in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Griffin, Georgia, and Charlotte, North Carolina. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In 1972, while working toward his master’s degree in English from Appalachian State University, he founded the Cold Mountain Review, a literary journal named after Gary Snyder’s translations of Han-Shan’s “Cold Mountain Poems.”

For 19 years, Smith taught English as a professor at Auburn University, where he also served as Alumni Writer-in-Residence for 12 years and editor of Southern Humanities Review. While in Montgomery, he received the Alabama Governor’s Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize nomination.

Smith arrived at W&L and became Shenandoah’s first full-time editor in July 1995, succeeding Dabney Stuart, professor of English emeritus. While directing the quarterly literary magazine’s internship program, he also served as writer-in-residence at the university and directed the Glasgow Endowment, which invites writers from across the U.S. to campus to read their work and talk to W&L students. He taught creative writing and literature and became adjunct professor of English in 2006. Under his guidance as editor, Shenandoah won the prestigious Governor’s Award for Arts in 2008. He retired from W&L in 2018 after 23 years.

As a fiction writer and poet, Smith gathered inspiration from Southern and Irish literature, childhood and nature, and he published numerous collections of poetry and books of short stories. His work won many accolades, including two nominations for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry (“The Cardinal Heart” and “Trespasser”). He was awarded the Library of Virginia Poetry Book of the Year Award twice (“Outlaw Style: Poems” and “Messenger”), as well as the Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize (“The Red Wolf: A Dream of Flannery O’Connor”), the Salmon Transatlantic Poetry Prize (“Split the Lark”), the Maurice English Poetry Award (“The Hollow Log Lounge”), a Pushcart Prize, the Cohen Prize, John Masefield Poetry Prize and the Emily Dickinson Poetry Prize.

His writings appeared in anthologies such as “Best American Short Stories,” “Best American Poetry,” “New Worlds of Literature” and “New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best,” as well as Atlantic Monthly, The Virginia Quarterly Review and The Kenyon Review. He also earned several fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Alabama Council on the Arts Fellowship and a Fellowship to the Yeats School. He held residences at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland and the Wurlitzer Foundation.

Smith is survived by his wife, Sarah Kennedy, and his sister, Sharon Smith Berman.

At his request, no formal service will be held. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in his name to The Cold Mountain Review at Appalachian State University, the American Cancer Society or the Parkinson’s Foundation.

Smith’s full obituary was published in The News-Gazette.