Larry Smith is a native Midwesterner, born and raised in a working-class family in the industrial Ohio River Valley. In 1965 he graduated from Muskingum College in Ohio and at 22 married a hometown girl, Ann Zaben. He worked in the steel mills that summer before moving to Euclid, Ohio where he taught high school and Ann began working as a nurse. He earned degrees at Kent State University (
M.A. and
Ph.D), and was there when the riots and shootings of students occurred. In 1970-1971 he and Ann and their daughter Laura moved to Huron, Ohio, where he began teaching at Firelands College of Bowling Green State University. Son Brian (1970) and daughter Suzanne (1975) were born in Huron. In 1980 he was a Fulbright lecturer in American Literature in Sicily. He is the author of eight books of poetry, a book of memoirs, six books of fiction, two literary biographies of authors Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Kenneth Patchen, and two books of translations from the Chinese with co-translator Mei Hui Huang. His photo history of his hometown Mingo Junction appeared recently in the Images of America Series. Two of his film scripts on authors James Wright and Kenneth Patchen have been made into films with Tom Koba and shown on PBS.
As a professor of English and humanities at Firelands College (1970-2010) he has taught writing and literature and served as director of the Firelands Writing Center, a cooperative of writers. As director of the literary publisher, Bottom Dog Press, Inc., he has edited over 65 books and carried into publication some 200 titles of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. In addition, Smith has been a reviewer for American Book Review, Parabola, Small Press Review, Choice, The San Francisco Review of Books, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohioana Quarterly, Heartlands, and the New York Journal of Books. He is a requested presenter at various writers� conferences in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. His poetry has been featured on American Public Media�s Writer�s Almanac with Garrison Keillor. His recent publications include the novel The Free Farm (2013), Each Moment All: Meditations as Poems (2012) and Lake Winds: Poems (2014). He enjoys playing guitar and doing meditation at the Converging Paths Meditation Center in Sandusky, Ohio.
