Clint Smith

The detail and depth of the storytelling is vivid and visceral, making history present and real. Smith deftly connects the past, hiding in plain sight, with today’s lingering effects. — NPR

A staff writer at The Atlantic and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How the Word Is Passed, Clint Smith is revolutionizing how we understand the history of our country, the physical places where we live, and the stories we tell about the world around us. Through his vital writing and talks, he argues that understanding our history not only enables us to understand our world, but also empowers us to fight for racial justice.

“From the moment enslaved people arrived on these shores, they were fighting for freedom,” he says. “The vast majority of people who fought for freedom never got a chance to experience it for themselves. But they fought for it anyway, because they knew that someday, someone would. What kind of responsibility does that bestow upon us? To attempt to build the sort of world that we might not see ourselves, because that’s what was done for us.”

Clint’s bestselling books include How the Word Is Passed, which Publishers Weekly called “an essential consideration of how America’s past informs its present.” In it, Clint takes us on a journey through landmarks that are both honest and dishonest about the past, offering a sweeping yet personal history of how slavery has shaped our country and ourselves. It has won numerous awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, and was named one of the best books of the year by TIME, The New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, and many more.

His latest book, Above Ground, was named to TIME magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books and NPR‘s Books We Love. A vibrant poetry collection that traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, TIME called it “a beautiful meditation not only on Smith’s own journey as a dad, but also on the effect our ever-changing world has on the way we raise our children.” Clint’s first book, Counting Descent, won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award.

In his forthcoming book Just Beneath the Soil, the first of a three book deal with Penguin Random House, Clint will explore the little-known stories behind World War II sites, and discuss how they shape our collective memory of the war. He will focus on people whose stories are often at the periphery of our dominant narrative of the conflict.

Clint received his PhD in Education from Harvard University. He has received fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New America, the Emerson Collective, the Art For Justice Fund, Cave Canem, and the National Science Foundation. His essays, poems, and scholarly writing have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, the Harvard Educational Review, and many more. He is a former National Poetry Slam champion and a recipient of the Jerome J. Shestack Prize from the American Poetry Review.