Poet Tracy K. Smith has achieved a great deal already but her appointment as the U.S. Poet Laureate tops the list of notable achievements. The Princeton professor hopes to use the platform and poetry to generate new conversations about diversity.
Smith was born in Massachusetts but raised primarily in Fairfield, California. Her father was an engineer who worked on the Hubble space telescope and her mother was a teacher. As a fifth-grader, Smith began writing poetry after reading works by Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson. A teacher saw her early works and encouraged her progression.
The Harvard University and Columbia University graduate formerly taught at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York. She has also won several awards for her works, including the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection, Life On Mars. (READ MORE)(SOURCE: BLACKAMERICAWEB.COM)