Patricia Smith, columnist for the Boston. Globe, began her journalism career in fifth grade, as the esteemed publisher of a mimeographed grade-school gossip rag in her home town of Chicago. inspired by her factory-worker father--who, instead of bedtime stories, read her the metro section of the Chicago Sun-Times each evening--to pen impressions of neighborhood, family an friends, Smith never considered entering any field. After graduation from Schurz High School, she enrolled in Southern Illinois University to pursue a journalism degree. Saddled with prerequisite courses from Earth Science to Archeology, she took an academic hiatus and was hired as a typist at the old Chicago Daily News. Ralizing that she would learn more on the job than she ever could in a classroom, she abandoned academia and began relentlessly pestering the editors ("I can write, I can write!"). Soon she was doing entertainment and music reviews, not yet officially classifed as a reporter.
After the Daily News folded in 1978, Smith was promoted to entertainment writerat the Chicago Sun-Times, where she also did straight-news reporting, winning awards from Women in Communications, Sigma Delta Chi and recognition from UPI for an investigative series on insurance fraud, which was also a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. She resumed her education during that period, but was told by professors at Northwestern University that she had learned all she needed to knowwhile practicing her art; she later returned to teach the school's Introductionto journalism course.
In 1990, Smith was hired by the Boston Globe as the arts and entertainment critic; she later moved to the Living/Arts section where she focused on writing about black culture. During that time, she also appeared on the metro, op-ed and national pages, covering the Clinton inauguration, the first Urban Peace and Justice Summit and the uprising that followed the Rodney King verdict. She was also chosen to spend a month in South Africa covering the country's first all-inclusive elections. The Boston Globe has nominated Patricia Smith's work for Pulitzer Prizes in the fields of commentary, criticism and international reporting.
In May of 1994, Smith began writing a weekly metro column, the first balck woman in the history of the newspaper to do so.
Publications
A published, poet, Smith is the author of "Close to Death, "Big Towns, Big Talk" and "Life According to Motown."
In Nov. and Dec. of 1993, "Life After Motown" -- Smith's one-woman poetry/theater production directed by Nobel Prize-winner Derek Walcott--ran for eight sold-out performances at Boston University's Playwrights Theater and later toured the Carribean. Currently Smith is working on "Bop Thunderous" -- a book of poems about South Africa to be published next year, and "Charlie," a theatrical work about the infamous Charles Stuart case.
Awards & Recognition
Smith has been awarded the Carl Sandburg Prize by the Friends of the Chicago Public Liberary and the prestigious Paterson Poetry Prize. Her work has been featured in The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, ANGI, atelier and Noctiluca. Smith has read her works at the Poets' Stage in Stockholm, the Sorbonne in Paris, Bahia '94 Music Festival in Brazil and at a cultural arts fair in Osaka, Japan. She was one of five American poets to tour Germany, Austria, and Amsterdam.
Community Involvement
Smith lectures often on the intersection of journalism and the creative arts, heads conference workshops and has developed special programs for students, troubled teens and the poetically and journalistically impaired.
Internships
