"In time you shall see Fate approach you
In the shape of your own image in the mirror."-Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology        Larry Smith  is a native Midwesterner, born and raised in a working-class family in the industrial Ohio River Valley. In 1965 he graduated from Muskingum College in Ohio and at 21 married a hometown girl, Ann Zaben. He woked in the steel mills that summer and they soon moved to Euclid, Ohio where he taught high school and Ann began working as a nurse. He earned degrees at Kent State University (M.A. and Ph.D), and was there when the riots and shootings of students occurred. In 1970-1971 he and Ann and their daughter Laura moved to Huron, Ohio where he began teaching at Firelands College of Bowling Green State University. Son Brian (1970) and daughter Suzanne (1975) were born in Huron.He is the author of eight books of poetry, a book of memoirs, six books of fiction, two literary biographies of authors Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Kenneth Patchen, and two books of translations from the Chinese with co-translator Mei Hui Huang. His photo history of his hometown Mingo Junction appeared recently in the Images of America Series. Two of his film scripts on authors James Wright and Kenneth Patchen have been made into films with Tom Koba and shown on PBS. In 1980 he was a Fulbright lecturer in American Literature in Sicily on "The Beats and the American Romantic Movement."As a professor of English and humanities at Firelands College (1970-2013) he has taught writing and literature and served as director of the Firelands Writing Center, a cooperative of writers. As director of the literary publisher, Bottom Dog Press, Inc., he has edited over 60 books and carried into publication some 180 titles of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. In addition, Smith has been a  reviewer for American Book Review, Parabola, Small Press Review, Choice, The San Francisco Review of Books, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohioana Quarterly, Heartlands, and the New York Journal of Books . He is a requested presenter at various writers’ conferences in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania,,  West Virginia, New York and Kentucky. His poetry has been featured on American Public Media’s "Writer’s Almanac" with Garrison Keillor. His novel The Free Farm has been released this year from Bottom Dog Press, followed by Each Moment All: Meditations as Poems (2012) and Lake Winds: Poems (2014). Since his retirement in 2003 as professor emeritus, he has done volunteer work for hospice, Court Appointed Special Advocate program, and St. Vincent de Paul Society. In 2007 he and wife Ann and Lou and Jan Young founded Converging Paths Meditation Center in Sandusky, Ohio. He enjoys playing guitar and doing meditation and being with his wife and 8 grandchildren.