Danez Smith earned his BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was a First Wave Arts scholar. He is the recipient of fellowships from the McKnight Foundation, Voices of Our Nation (VONA), Cave Canem, and more. He is a founding member of the multicultural Dark Noise Collective. Smith is a 2011 Individual World Poetry Slam finalist and the reigning two-time Rustbelt Individual Champion, and was a member of the 2014 championship team, Sad Boy Supper Club. In 2014, he served as the festival director for the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam, and was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.