Rodney T. Smith grew up in Georgia and North Carolina. Smith received his higher education at Georgia Tech, the University of North Carolina, and Appalachian State University. He now lives in Rockbridge County, Virginia.

While at Appalachian State University, Smith founded Cold Mountain Review. He also taught for nineteen years as an English professor at Auburn University, where he was named an Alumni Writer-In-Residence.

At Auburn Smith co-edited Southern Humanities Review. He currently serves as editor of Shenandoah, a prestigious literary journal published by Washington and Lee University, where he also teaches creative writing and literature courses in the English Department.

Smith's writings have won the Pushcart Prize and been collected in Best American Short Stories and New Stories From the South. In addition, he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the Alabama Council on the Arts (where he also received the Alabama Governor's Award for Achievement by an Artist). Two of his poetry collections have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Other awards include the Library of Virginia Poetry Prize and the Maurice English Poetry Award.

Selected poetry collections

• Outlaw Style: Poems (Arkansas Poetry Series, 2007)
• The Hollow Log Lounge (University of Illinois Press, 2003). Winner of the 2004 Maurice English Poetry Award.
• Brightwood (Louisiana State University Press, 2003)
• Messenger (Louisiana State University Press, 2001). Winner of the Library of Virginia Poetry Prize.
• Split the Lark: Selected Poems (1999)
• Trespasser (1996). Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
• Hunter-Gatherer (Livingston University Press, 1996)
• The Cardinal Heart (1991). Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
• From the High Dive (1983)

Fiction

• Faith: Stories (Black Belt Press, 1995)
• Uke Rivers Delivers: Stories (Yellow Shoe Press, 2006)

As editor

• Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets of Virginia (2003, with Sarah Kennedy).