Tracy K. Smith is the author of three books of poetry. Her most recent collection, Life on Mars, won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and was selected as a New York Times Book Review Notable Book. Duende won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and an Essence Literary Award. The Body’s Question was the winner of the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Smith was the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award in 2004 and a Whiting Writers’ Award in 2005. In 2015 her memoir Ordinary Light will be released by Knopf.