Danny Smith A native of Marion, a small town in North Louisiana, Danny Smith earned an MA in English from the University of Louisiana at Monroe and is now in relentless pursuit of his doctorate with a Creative Writing dissertation and a Southern Literature major area. Drawn to words at an early age, he writes mostly short stories and personal essays. He knows that writing has empowered him and shown him that he actually has a voice and something worth saying and hopes to transfer this idealism and enthusiasm to his students at UL Lafayette where he has taught English 101 and 102. He looks forward to teaching Southern Literature and Creative Writing when the time comes. He is also working hard at getting his stories (many of which deal with the quotidian and not so quotidian lives of rural North Louisiana and universality all at once) and literary criticisms (many of which delve into deconstruction of deconstruction and postpostmodernism) circulated and published.

Danny Smith Thus Far

EDUCATION

Currently involved in Ph.D. studies in English, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

M.A. English with Creative Writing Thesis, University of Louisiana at Monroe 2001

B.A. General Studies, University of Louisiana at Monroe 1999

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

English 102 Literature and Composition

English 101 Composition and Rhetoric

English 090 Remedial English

PUBLICATIONS

2001 "The Magic Of Words" (personal essay). Journal of College Writing (1st place graduate student essay in the 2001 Louisiana Association for College Composition Writing Competition).

2001 “Drinking It All In” (short story). The Helicon, Spring

OTHER PROFESSIONAL WORK

Spring 2003 Co-editor of the Southwestern Review

Spring 2003 Repose Beyond Fate: Meditation and Maya in Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues utilized at the University of Houston-Victoria in Dr. Lawrence Clark’s English 6311 class, Major Authors and Their Times: The Beat Poets at the University of Houston

Spring 2003 Presented Repose Beyond Fate: Meditation and Maya in Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues at the Southwest / Texas Popular Culture American Culture Association.

Fall 2002 Assisted with the planning and publicity of Acadiana Afternoons Reading Series, a pairing of graduate students with local writers as part of the Deep South Writers Festival

Spring 2002 Fiction judge of the Iberia Parish High School Fiction Competition

Fall 2001-Present Read short stories at the ULL Reading Series at Chris’ Po Boys once a semester

Summer 1999 Participated in Florida International University’s Creative Writing Abroad program. Lived in Canada and studied narrative craft under John Dufresne.

Spring 2001 Creative Non-Fiction editor of The Helicon

1997-2001 Read short stories at Enoch’s Café as part of ULM Reading series

ORGANIZATIONS

Sigma Tau Delta

Danny Smith on UL-Lafayette

UL Lafayette is one of the few universities that offer a Ph.D. in English with a focus on Creative Writing. It is close enough to where I am originally from while still presenting me with an entirely different culture in many ways. The food is wonderful. The festivals are excellent. The professors are outstanding. Drs. Ernest J. Gaines and Reggie Young have done much to help me hone my craft of fiction. These men, Dr. Skip Fox, and Dr. Mary Ann Wilson (among many others) are all faculty that care, and it shows! In addition to having wonderful faculty and a wonderful university, Lafayette has the vibe of a small city coupled with the culture of a metropolis and is an excellent place for one to expand and grow as a writer, teacher, scholar, and person.

Visit Danny’s personal homepage

Read Danny Smith’s Fiction

Go to UL-Lafayette Creative Writing Anthology

Creative Writing home Page

English Department Home Page