Sheila Smith McKoy, PHD is an award-winning poet, fiction writer, and filmmaker. She is the recipient of the 2020 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Prize in poetry. Her full-length poetry collection, The Bones Beneath (Black Lawrence Press, 2024) “reminds readers that history is as close as imagination.” She is also co-author of One Window’s Light: A Haiku Collection, a collaboration of five Black poets; the collection won the 2017 Haiku Society of America's Merit Book Award for best haiku anthology. SmithMcKoy has also written, produced, directed or served as executive producer for four documentary films, including Maama Watali and Luwero: A Conversation about War, Peace and Gender (2017). She is botha Pulitzer Prize and Pushcart Prize nominated poet.
Dr. Smith McKoy has authored and edited numerous scholarly works in the areas of Africana Studies, race and difference, mentorship, literature and culture, and mentorship. Her most recent and forthcoming publications include Teaching Literature and Writing in Prisons (2023) and Ifa: Solutions for Contemporary Society (January 2025).