Willie Smith was born in 1949 in Greenbelt, Maryland.  An athlete, he was captain of his high school track team and lettered four times. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Reed College.  At Reed, he studied creative writing under Robert Peterson and Kathleen Fraser.

In 1971, he spent a summer in Avignon where he read Proust in the original French and lived for the first time with cockroaches. He has been in Seattle since 1978. His poems, stories and translations have appeared in more than 50 magazines.  Jesse Bernstein said of his novel Oedipus Cadet (1990, Black Heron Press): "Willie Smith has a reason for writing that goes hand-in-hand with my reason for reading: surviving under a crushing weight by proving daily that it is not a crushing weight.  This writing is the only kind of argument that beats universal inertia. Heads roll here."  Willie says of himself “I’m deeply ashamed of being human. My work celebrates this horror. I am happily married without children and should not be around for too much longer.” 

Oedipus Cadet is available through Powells.com.  Check out Willie’s spoken word performances on YouTube.