Rodney Theodore Smith (April 13, 1947 – December 24, 2024) was an American poet, fiction writer, and editor who published as R.T.
[3] Smith spent his summers with his extended family is rural Georgia and, in 1953 moved to Charlotte, North Carolina with his parents.
He served as editor of Shenandoah, a prestigious literary journal published by Washington and Lee University, where he also taught creative writing and literature courses in the English Department.
The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology noted that Smith's writings frequently focused on the rituals and histories connected with both the Native American and Celtic aspects of his ancestry, adding that Smith's poetry "carefully scans landscape, ritual, and history for what they can bring to the modern age.
"[1] Kirkus Reviews described his 2006 short fiction collection Uke Rivers Delivers: Stories as being "firmly in the tradition of great Southern storytelling.