Milldust and Roses: Memoirs

Milldust and Roses: Memoirs by Larry Smith

Born in the industrial Ohio Valley in the 1940's, Smith has worked as a steel mill laborer, a

high school teacher, a college professor, and a writer. A graduate of Mingo Central High School, Muskingum College, and Kent State University,

he is the author of seven books of poetry(including Ohio Zen 1972 and Thoreau’s Lost

Journal 2001), two books of fiction (Beyond Rust and Working It Out), two literary

biographies (Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Poet-At-Large 1984, and Kenneth Patchen: Rebel Poet

in America 2000) and a book of translations from the Chinese (Chinese Zen Poems 1997).

He co-produced two docu-dramas on Ohio writers (James Wright’s Ohio and Kenneth

Patchen: An Art of Engagement) and is the director of the Firelands Writing Center and

editor of Bottom Dog Press,Inc.

Smith is also the father of three adult children, and is married to Ann Smith a professor of

Nursing at the Medical College of Ohio. The author is a requested speaker on creative

writing, the American Transcendental writers, Zen Buddhist writings, working-class literature, and “The Art and Act of Writing Memoir:”

He is a professor of English and Humanities at BGSU Firelands College in Huron, Ohio, where he teaches writing, literature, and film. In 1998 he received the Ohioana Poetry Award. He has also been awarded a Fullbright Lectureship to Italy and an NEH

Fellowship.