CRYSTAL SIMONE SMITH is an award-winning poet and educator. She is the author of Runagate: Songs of the Freedom Bound (Duke University Press, 2025) and Dark Testament (Henry Holt, 2023). In 2022, her collection of haiku, Ebbing Shore, won The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Book Award. Smith is the recipient a Duke Humanities Unbounded Fellowship. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including POETRY Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, Rattle, Poetry Daily, Frogpond, and The Heron’s Nest. She teaches in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University and writes poetry about the human condition and social change.
Her poem “slave museum” won 1st place in the NCPS Bloodroot Haiku Award in 2019. In 2024 her poem “Civil Twilight” won 1st place in the North Carolina Poetry Society Poetry of Courage Award. Smith’s co-authored One Window’s Light: A Collection of Haiku (Unicorn Press, 2017), edited by Lenard D. Moore was awarded the 1st Place Merit Book Award for best haiku anthology by the Haiku Society of America.
In 2022, her collection of haiku, Ebbing Shore, won The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Book Award.
In 2024, her book Dark Testament was awarded the following:
