Larry R. Smith is a poet, fiction writer, literary biographer, translator, essayist and reviewer.
Smith was born in Mingo Junction, Ohio in 1943 and graduated from Mingo High School in 1961, Muskingum College in 1965, then on to Kent State University in Ohio for a masters and doctorate in American and Contemporary World Literature.
His thesis work was on Sherwood Anderson and dissertation on Kenneth Patchen, fellow Ohio writers.
He also has received a National Endowment for the Humanities summer grant and a Fulbright Teaching Lectureship to Italy.
Smith is the director of The Firelands Writing Center and of Bottom Dog Press.