Crystal Simone Smith is an award-winning poet and educator. She is the author of Runagate: Songs of the Freedom Bound (Duke University Press, 2025) and Dark Testament (Henry Holt, 2023). She also authored three poetry chapbooks. In 2022, her collection of haiku, Ebbing Shore, won The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Book Award. Smith is the recipient a Duke Humanities Unbounded Fellowship. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Prairie Schooner, POETRY Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, Frogpond, and Modern Haiku. She teaches in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University and writes poetry about the human condition and social change. Smith is the current President of the Haiku Society of America.