Clint Smith is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and was named one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2021. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling poetry collection Above Ground and the award-winning poetry collection Counting Descent. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic.