CRYSTAL SIMONE SMITH is the author of three poetry chapbooks, Routes Home (Finishing Line Press, 2013) Running Music (Longleaf Press, 2014), and Down To Earth (Longleaf Press, 2020). She co-authored, One Window’s Light, A Collection of Haiku, edited by Lenard D. Moore (2017), which won the Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Award for Best Haiku Anthology. In 2019, she won the North Carolina Poetry Society Bloodroot Haiku Award. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Prairie Schooner, POETRY Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, Frogpond, and Modern Haiku. In 2020, she received a Duke University Humanities Unbounded Fellowship. She writes poetry about the human condition and social change.

In 2015, Crystal Simone Smith was the first recipient of the Ashber Initiatives Literary Grant, which funded Wildflowers: Haiku, Senryu, and Haiga (2016), a limited edition, letterpress book of traditional Japanese poetry and art. 

Her poem “Plantation Tour” took 2nd place in NCPS Griffin-Farlow Haiku Award in 2014 and her poem “Slave Museum” won 1st place in the NCPS Bloodroot Haiku Award in 2019. Smith’s co-authored One Window’s Light: A Collection of Haiku (Unicorn Press, 2017), edited by Lenard D. Moore was awarded the 1st Place Merit Book Award for best haiku anthology by the Haiku Society of America.