Larry R. Smith

Larry Smith is a native of Mingo Junction, Ohio, in Appalachia's Panhandle region of the Ohio River Valley. Smith has worked as a steel mill laborer, a high school teacher, a college professor, and a writer and editor. A graduate of Mingo Central High School, Muskingum College, and Kent State University, he is the author of eight books of poetry, a book of memoirs, five books of fiction, two biographies of authors Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Kenneth Patchen, and two books of translations from the Chinese.

Now a professor emeritus of Bowling Green State University's Firelands College, he is the director of the Firelands Writing Center there and of Bottom Dog Press. Smith has received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council, and a Fulbright Lectureship in American Literature to Italy. The author is a requested speaker on creative writing, publishing, American Transcendental writers, Zen Buddhist writings, and working-class literature. Smith held a NEH grant for summer studies in Surrealism at Syracuse University in 1978.

Smith is the father of three adult children, and is married to Ann Smith a family counselor and professor emerita of Nursing at the Toledo University of Ohio.

Most recently he is the author of THE FREE FARM: A NOVEL the Working Lives and Appalachian Writing Series from Bottom Dog Press and MINGO JUNCTION, OHIO, a pictorial history of his hometown In the Images of America series from Arcadia Publishing. LAKE WINDS: POEMS appeared in 2014, and in 2017, THE THICK OF THIN: MEMOIRS OF A WORKING-CLASS WRITER. His revised and enlarged THOREAU'S LOST JOURNAL: POEMS and THE PEARS: POEMS (2019); MINGO TOWN AND MEMORIES (2020).

His books include:

Connections: Morning Dew: Tanka by Larry Smith and core & all: haiku by Barbara Sabol

Mingo Town and Memories (Bird Dog Publishing, 2020)

The Pears: Poems (Harmony Series, 2019)

The Free Farm: A Novel (Bottom Dog Press, 2011)

Mingo Junction: Images of America Series (Arcadia Publishing 2011)

Tu Fu Comes to America: A Story in Poems (March Street Press, 2010)

The Long River Home: A Novel, Working Lives Series 2009

The Kanshi Poems of Taigu Ryokan, translations 2009

Faces and Voices: Tales. 2006.

A River Remains: Poems. 2006.

Milldust & Roses: Memoirs. 2005.

Thoreu's Lost Journal: Poems. 2001; enlarged edition 2018.

Kenneth Patchen: Rebel Poet in America (Biography). 2000/rev. 2010.

Chinese Zen Poems: What Hold Has This Mountain? translations 1998.

Working It Out (novel) 1998.

Beyond Rust: Novella and Stories. 1995.

Steel Valley: Postcards and Letters (Poems). 1992.

Ohio Zen Poems with d. steven conkle (A Twinbook). 1989.

Across These States (Journal Poem). 1985.

Scissors, Paper, Rock (Prose Poems). 1982.

Echo Without Sound (Poems with Etchings by Stephen Smigocki). 1982.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Poet-at-Large (Literary biography). 1983.

Kenneth Patchen (Literary biography). 1978.

Larry Reading from his books: https://youtu.be/CpCeOfJAd8E