Tracy K. Smith is the author of five books of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Life on Mars (2011 and Such Color: New and Selected Poems (2021) as well as a memoir, Ordinary Light (2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction. In June 2017, Smith she named U.S. Poet Laureate. She is a professor of English and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University and the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.