Heather Derr-Smith Non-Member Joined 2019

American Poet

Poetry

Heather Derr-Smith is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop with five books, most recently Thrust (Winner, Lexi Rudnitsky Prize, 2018) and Outskirts (University of Akron Press, 2023). Her work often wrestles with the trauma of war and its aftermath. Her first book, Each End of the World (Main Street Rag Press) was written in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina during the war in the 1990s, where she worked in a refugee camp and delivered humanitarian aid. Her second book, The Bride Minaret (Editor's Choice Award, University of Akron Press) was written mostly in Syria, where she taught poetry workshops with Palestinian refugees from Iraq. Her work has also appeared in journals such as The Literary Review, Cimarron Review, and Missouri Review.