Clint Smith

Clinton Smith III (born August 25, 1988) is an American writer, poet and scholar. He is the author of Counting Descent, a 2017 poetry collection that was a finalist for the NAACP Image Awards and won Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Smith is also a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is a regular contributor to the Pod Save the People podcast, where he discusses the week's news with a panel of other activists.

Smith grew up in New Orleans, where he went to Benjamin Franklin High School prior to enrolling at the Awty International School in Houston, Texas. He attended college at Davidson College, graduating in 2010.

He taught high school English in Prince George's County, Maryland before beginning doctoral work at the Harvard Graduate School of Education with a concentration in Culture, Institutions, and Society. His research focuses on race, mass incarceration and education.

He was part of the winning team at the 2014 National Poetry Slam and was a 2017 recipient of the Jerome J. Shestack Prize from The American Poetry Review. He published his first book of poetry, Counting Descent, in 2016. It won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for the NAACP Image Awards. He was on the 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 list and Ebony's 2017 Power 100 list.

Smith has also been a contributor to The New Yorker magazine. His work is included in the anthology The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race (2016), edited by Jesmyn Ward.

A fan of the Arsenal F.C. football (soccer) club, Smith has written several New Yorker essays on the sport.

Smith resides in Maryland with his wife and two children.