Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. Smith has received fellowships from New America, the Emerson Collective, the Art For Justice Fund, Cave Canem and the National Science Foundation. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review and elsewhere. His most recent book is How the World Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America.