Evan Lavender-Smith

Evan Lavender-Smith is an assistant professor of creative writing in the Department of English at Virginia Tech. He is also Vice President of Virginia Tech’s Faculty Senate.

Lavender-Smith’s first book, From Old Notebooks, a cross-genre work combining elements of fiction, nonfiction, memoir, poetry, and philosophy, was listed on “Readers’ Favorite Books from Independent Presses” at Huffington Post, “Your Favorite Poets’ Favorite Books of Poetry” at Flavorwire, and several best-of-the-year lists. His second book, Avatar, an unpunctuated monologue delivered by a character floating in outer space, was a Small Press Distribution Bestseller. Lavender-Smith’s stories and essays have been noted in Best American Nonrequired Reading and Best American Essays, adapted for stage and radio, and translated into several languages. His writing has been praised in national and international media outlets, including Bookforum, The Guardian, Harper’s, The Irish Times, The Times Literary Supplement, and Vice. A recent fellow at Vermont Studio Center and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, he has been invited to read and lecture at Brown University, the University of California at San Diego, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Columbia College, the University of Denver, Lake Forest College, Macalester College, and elsewhere.

As founding editor of Noemi Press and former editor-in-chief of Puerto del Sol, Lavender-Smith has published and edited writing by Sherman Alexie, Frédéric Boyer, Éric Chevillard, Helen DeWitt, Rikki Ducornet, Michael Martone, Rick Moody, Antoine Volodine, and others. With Carmen Giménez Smith, he performed the first complete English translation of  “Canto del macho anciano” [“The Old Man’s Song”], a 6,500-word poem by Pablo de Rokha, recipient of Chile’s National Literature Prize. Lavender-Smith is also an editorial advisor at The Minnesota Review and a contributing writer at HTMLGIANT.

He has served as a juror for the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital, the Heinz Foundation, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. He was recently elected to the Creative Writing Studies Organization’s Board of Directors. At Virginia Tech, Lavender-Smith serves as Vice President of the Faculty Senate, as a member of the advisory board to the Studio 72 Living–Learning Community, as Co-Director of the Glossolalia Literary Festival, and as Secretary of Phi Beta Kappa’s Mu of Virginia Chapter.

A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and New Mexico State University, Lavender-Smith lives with his two children in Blacksburg, 12.7 miles away from the gravesite of his great-great-great-great grandmother, Rosanna Caldwell, whose nephew, Addison, was the first student to enroll at Virginia Tech.