John Warner Smith was the Poet Laureate of Louisiana from 2019 to 2021 and is the only African American man to serve in the office in its 80-year history. Smith has published five collections of poetry, most recently Our Shut Eyes, published by MadHat Press in 2021. Smith’s poems are widely published in many of the top literary journals in the country.

Smith’s novella, For All Those Men: When the KKK Threatened to Take Control of Louisiana, was published by UL Press in November 2022.

A Cave Canem Fellow, Smith is also a 2020 Poets Laureate Fellow of the Academy of American Poets and is the winner of the 2019 Linda Hodge Bromberg Literary Award. Smith earned his MFA at the University of New Orleans.

Smith currently works as Executive Director of the Shadow-on-the-Teche.