Katy Simpson Smith

Katy Simpson Smith is a writer and academic affiliated with Bennington College, where she teaches fiction in the Bennington Writing Seminars. She is the Elizabeth S. and Richard M. Cashin Fellow for 2025–2026 at Radcliffe, working on a novel-memoir exploring the historical transition of a Mississippi elementary school named after Jefferson Davis and later Barack Obama.

Smith holds a PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her research intersects history, nature, faith, art, gender, and mortality, often contextualized within the American South. Her literary accolades include the Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award and the inaugural Eudora Welty Chair for Southern Literature at Millsaps College.

• Education: PhD in History (UNC Chapel Hill), MFA (Bennington Writing Seminars)
• Current Role: Lecturer in Fiction at Bennington College

Her work has been recognized in The New Yorker, New York Times, and Vogue, with publications spanning Granta, The Paris Review, and The Washington Post. She resides in New Orleans.