Zinnia Smith is a writer and educator based in Somerville…

She received her M.F.A. in creative writing from Stony Brook University. Her work is published with TSR: The Southampton Review, East, Voicemail Poems, and Peach Mag, among others. Her essay, "American Girl," won Fugue's 2018 writing contest in prose, and her fiction was nominated for Sundress’s Best of the Net 2019. She was a semi-finalist for American Short Fiction’s 2019 American Short(er) Fiction writing contest. In June 2022, her poem was long listed for the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize by Foundlings Press. Her fiction is featured in the speculative anthology WORLDS IN WHICH. She received a 2024 Mass Cultural Council Grant for Creative Individuals for the literary arts, and received a 2025 Literature Artist Fellowship grant from the Somerville Arts Council.

Zinnia has taught writing, literature, and American culture classes at Stony Brook University, Bunker Hill Community College, arts nonprofits, and independently at local community spaces. She joined the Fall 2023 cohort for Critical Embodied Wellness for Educators (College of Education at California State Dominguez Hills). She’s passionate about the collaborative efforts of multicultural classroom spaces and arts communities, and through mentors, her disability became a wisdom and guide in these practices. She loves to discuss how to cultivate pedagogy and arts programming that can bring the world towards a more supportive and beautiful place.

In her free time, she’s learning about good wine, walking aimlessly, and working on her haunted house novel….