Clinton "Clint" Smith III (born August 25, 1988) is an American writer, poet and scholar. He is the author of the number one New York Times Best Seller, How the Word Is Passed, which won the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and was named one of the top ten books of 2021 by the New York Times. He is also the author of two poetry collections, Counting Descent, which was published in 2016 and Above Ground, which was published in March 2023. == Early life and education == Of …