Smith was born in a pre-Civil War house on his grandparents’ farm in rural Washington County, Tennessee — just eight miles from Jonesborough.
During high school and college, Smith was a reporter for the weekly Herald and Tribune in Jonesborough and the daily Johnson City Press.
When Smith was driving some of his journalism students to a nearby town to print the school newspaper, they were listening to comedian and storyteller Jerry Clower on the car radio tell a story about hunting in Mississippi.
Two years after the first Festival, Smith founded the National Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation,[4] the organization that would become the International Storytelling Center.
[8] In 1987, Smith compiled and edited Homespun,[9] a book of stories, profiles of America’s leading storytellers, and how-to information.