JESSICA SMITH is a teacher, librarian, and writer. Smith studied in the Poetics Program at SUNY Buffalo, attaining a B.A. summa cum laude in English and Language Theory in 2002. She then pursued an M.A. in Comparative Literature at Buffalo (2005) and later returned to Buffalo for her M.L.S. (2010). After working as a librarian for a decade, she pursued an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Miami University (2019) followed by an M.A.E. in Secondary English Education (2021). She is currently a Ph.D. student in Communications with a concentration in Book and Publishing Studies at the University of Alabama (expected 2027).

TEACHING

Smith is currently a Full-Time Instructor of English at the University of Alabama, where she teaches Composition (EN 101, 102, 103) and Book & Print Design (EN 383). She also teaches Women’s and Gender Studies (WS 100) as an Adjunct Instructor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

POETRY
Smith’s creative work includes three full-length poetry books, Organic Furniture Cellar (Outside Voices Press), Life-List (Chax Press), and How to Know the Flowers (Veliz Books), and eighteen chapbooks including Lion’s Den, The Lover is Absent, and Shifting Landscapes from above/ground press, Fever (Model Press), and The Women in Visual Poetry: The Bechdel Test (Essay Press). Her fourth major poetry project, The Daybooks, is forthcoming as a series of four full-length books from Insert Press. Smith’s visual poetry has been exhibited in the U.S. and Canada and is part of the Lunar Codex. As an active member of the poetry community, Smith founded and edited the magazines name and FOURSQUARE, curated the Indian Springs School Visiting Writers Series and Treehouse Reading Series in Birmingham, AL, and guest edited for other literary magazines such as BothBoth and The Volta. Now she volunteers as a first reader for Black Warrior Review and Miami University Press.

LIBRARIES
As a librarian, Smith has archived for NYPL/Internet Archive, the Poetry Collection at the University at Buffalo (including the Clark Coolidge, James Joyce, and Kenneth Rexroth collections), and the Poetics Program (Charles Bernstein’s correspondence, housed at UCSD). She blends her interests in poetry, gender studies, and archives in her research on the history of pocket notebooks in American culture, artists’ books, and gender and literacy as a Ph.D. student in Communications at the University of Alabama.