Dr. Randall Smith

Education

• B.B.A, University of Georgia
• M.A., University of South Carolina
• Ph.D., University of South Carolina

Dr. Randy Smith has a Ph.D. in Twentieth-Century American Literature and MA in English. He founded and is the director of the BFA Program in Creative Writing at Belhaven University where he has taught for the past twenty years.

He collects books, plays the drums, and writes poetry. Dr. Smith grew up on a farm in south Georgia and was the first person in his family to go to college. Some of his favorite authors are Angie Thomas, Flannery O'Connor, Seamus Heaney, Rainer Maria Rilke, Isabel Allende, and Jesmyn Ward.

Areas of Expertise

• Poetry Workshops
• Writing for Children and Young Adults
• Speculative Fiction
• Myth and Fairy Tales
• The Hero's Journey
• Book History
• American Literatures

Teaching Focus

• Advanced Poetry Workshop
• Principles of Editing
• Mission and Calling for Writers
• Introduction to Creative Writing
• Colloquy (Small Group for Writers)

Scholarly Contributions and Most Recent Professional Publications

• "Angie Thomas and The Hate U Give: The Story of a Student Novel." Convention Speaker. Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, Pub U. Nashville, TN. November 2018.
• Contributors Scholarship and Poetry Participant. Sewanee Writers' Conference. University of the South. Sewanee, TN, July 2018.
• "Lookout" and "Learning the Craft of Land." Tupelo Quarterly 14 (2018). Finalists for the Tupelo Quarterly Annual Poetry Open Contest.
• Tupelo Press Manuscript Fellowship. Truchas Poetry Conference. Truchas, NM, November 2017.
• “James Dickey and His Reader: The Movement from Drowning to Deliverance.” The Way We Read James Dickey: Critical Approaches for the Twenty-first Century. Eds. William B. Thesing and Theda Wrede. University of South Carolina Press, 2009.