Leonora Smith was born between V-E and V-J day in Great Falls, Montana, and spent the first six months of her life living in a dresser drawer. A baby boomer and proud product of her generation, Smith's formative years took her from the Eisenhower Administration to the summer of love. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Contemporary Michigan Poetry, Alaska Quarterly Review, Exquisite Corpse, and Nimrod. A collection of her poetry, Spatial Relations, was published in 2001. She won the 2002 Gwendolyn Brooks poetry prize (Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature) for “Purple,” written with support from her 2001 IRGP grant. She has been awarded creative writing grants from the Michigan Council for the Arts (fiction); the Virginia Studio Center; the Atlantic Center for the Arts; the Banff Centre for the Arts; and from MSU.
Smith has a dual Ph.D. in English and Curriculum from MSU, with an emphasis on research in the teaching of writing at the college level and above. With stints as a waitress and bartender, she is now an associate professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University. She has worked as a free-lance writer for government and industry; as editor of Muses (the alumni magazine of MSU's College of Arts & Letters); and as associate editor for Years Press. She is on the editorial board of Fourth Genre.
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