Currently enrolled in Virginia Tech’s Integrative STEM Education PhD Program, http://www.soe.vt.edu/istemed/index.html, Mattie Quesenberry Smith is an instructor of American Literature, rhetoric, composition, and creative writing who recently joined V.M.I.’s Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies http://www.vmi.edu/academics/ after teaching and writing in various professional, academic, and local capacities throughout the years. She has served as a legislative assistant for a United States Congressman, managing his Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee duties, writing articles, and creating public relations materials; an editor for Conservative Review; and a reviewer for the Hollins Critic.

In addition to teaching at V.M.I., Smith serves as an instructor at Blue Ridge Community College in Weyer’s Cave, Virginia, https://www.brcc.edu/. She also mentors writers in Rockbridge County, Virginia, by mediating Sub Terra, a local creative writing workshop. For years, she coordinated Writers at Studio Eleven, first with Fine Arts in Rockbridge (FAIR), and then with Lesley Wheeler at Washington and Lee University; this was an evening reading series for writers drawn from various communities and interests–professional, student, academic, and local.

Recently, Finishing Line Press nominated Smith’s chapbook, Mother Chaos: Under Electric Light, for a Library of Virginia Literary Award, and Ruminate editors nominated her poem “To a Fishing Father” for a Pushcart Poetry Prize. Her work in appears in publications such as Diagram, Dappled Things, Southern Poetry Review, Floyd County Moonshine, Red Earth Review, and Avatar. As screenwriter, Smith shares numerous awards with her husband, Douglas N. Smith, for their documentary film, Between Two Fires, and a screenplay, Once to Every Man—including a CINE Golden Eagle and New York International Independent Film and Video Festival’s Best Documentary of the Show.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Hollins University who was inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa and awarded several creative writing and science honors, Smith focuses on the influences of science and technology on the poetic voice, and she explores the intersections between science, technology, engineering, math, and metaphor making.  Also interested in the impact of natural events on the history of humankind, she is contributing to a feature film project and related graphic novel series adapted from Eagle in the Snow, a novel written by Wallace Breem and set on the Rhine River, 406 A.D., when barbarians crossed that frozen river on New Year’s Eve to catalyze the fall of Rome.