Thrust by Heather Derr-Smith, winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Prize, Persea Books, 2017

Heather Derr-Smith was born in Dallas, Texas in 1971. She spent most of her childhood in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Derr-Smith earned a B.A. in Art History at the University of Virginia, where she also took poetry workshops with Charles Wright, Rita Dove, and Greg Orr.  Heather went on to earn an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has published three books of poems, Each End of the World (Main Street Rag Press, 2005), The Bride Minaret (University of Akron Press, 2008) and Tongue Screw (Sparkwheel Press, 2016). Her fourth collection, Thrust won the 2016 Lexi Rudnitsky Prize at Persea Books (2017).

Derr-Smith’s work deals with trauma, both personal and geopolitical.  Derr-Smith  is founder and director of Cuvaj se/Take Care a nonprofit supporting writers in conflict zones and post-conflict recovery zones. She leads poetry workshops with survivors of violence, war, and the international migration/refugee crisis.  She has worked in refugee camps and with IDP’s in Syria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Eastern Ukraine as well as advocacy for gun-violence survivors and refugees/migrants in the United States, Estonia, Croatia, Hungary, and Czech Republic.

Tongue Screw by Heather Derr-Smith, published at Spark Wheel Press, 2016