Patricia Smith - Poetry.LA Interview

PATRICIA SMITH is the author of nine critically-acclaimed books of poetry, including "Unshuttered" (TriQuarterly Books, 2023), "Incendiary Art" (TriQuarterly Books, 2017), winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2018 NAACP Image Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; "Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah" (Coffee House Press, 2012), winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press, 2008), a National Book Award finalist. She began her career in the 1980s as a slam poet, becoming a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam.