Suzi Q. Smith is an award-winning artist, activist, and educator who lives in Denver, Colorado. Performing across the U.S. for over a decade, she has shared stages with Nikki Giovanni, the late Gil Scott Heron, and many more. Her poems have appeared in Union Station Magazine, Suspect Press, La Palabra, Muzzle Magazine, Malpais Review, The Pedestal, The Los Angeles Journal, Denver Syntax, Word is Bond, The Peralta Press, Yellow Chair Review, and in the anthologies The Mutiny Info Reader, Diverse-City, His Rib: Anthology of Women, and In Our Own Words. Her chapbook collection of poems, Thirteen Descansos, was published by Penmanship Books, and her forthcoming collection, A Gospel of Bones, will be available from Alternating Current Press in 2020 and her second collection, Poems for the End of the World, will be available from Finishing Line Press in 2021.
Mentor Statement
As a mentor, nurturing your relationship to your writing. My approach as an educator and as a mentor is collaborative, non-hierarchical, and affirming. My approach in editing and mentoring is to understand your goals so that I can support you in reaching them, and in fostering your voice, skills, and talents in writing to strengthen them as you build your portfolio. I am a consistent and deliberate communicator, and making myself available to students and mentees is a priority. In addition to a broad selection of writing outside of the traditional academic focus in literature, I frequently offer multimedia, nontraditional, and abstract materials and approaches to broaden students’ perspectives and identify new ways into and/or through the writing.