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R.T. Smith Named W&L’s Writer-in-Residence

R.T. Smith, editor of Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review, has been named W&L’s Writer-in-Residence, effective July 1.

Born in Washington, D.C., Smith was raised in Georgia and North Carolina. He received his B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, his M.A. from Appalachian State University and also studied at Georgia Tech.

Smith taught at Auburn University for 19 years, serving as Alumni Writer-in-Residence for the last 12 years there. He has been at W&L editing Shenandoah since 1995.

In addition to editing Shenandoah at W&L, Smith also teaches creative writing and literature courses.

Smith is the author of over 12 poetry collections including “Outlaw Style: Poems,” “The Hollow Log Lounge,” “Brightwood” and “Messenger.” He has written two collections of stories, “Faith” and “Uke Rivers Delivers,” and a third, “The Calaboose Epistles,” is forthcoming in October. His current project is a book-length poem about Flannery O’Connor; Smith will be teaching a course on O’Connor’s fiction this fall.

Smith has received one fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, two Virginia Arts Commission fellowships, three Alabama Arts Council fellowships and the Alabama Governor’s Award for Achievement by an Artist. He also received three fellowships for an individual artist from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Smith’s writings have won the Pushcart Prize three times, have been published five times in New Stories from the South, and have also been published in Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, Atlantic Monthly, Southern Review, among others.

He has been the winner of the Library of Virginia Poetry Book Award twice for “Messenger” and “Outlaw Style: Stories.”

He and his wife, poet Sarah Kennedy, live in Rockbridge County.