NCTE is thrilled to announce that award-winning author and journalist Clint Smith will join us at the 2026 NCTE Annual Convention!
A staff writer at The Atlantic, Smith will be the keynote speaker at the Secondary Section Luncheon on Saturday, November 21 at 12:30 p.m. An advance reader copy of Smith’s upcoming book, Just Beneath the Soil: World War II Through the Eyes of Its Last Witnesses, will be made available as a gift to luncheon attendees while supplies last. A book signing will follow.
“Clint Smith’s odyssey from Normandy to Nagasaki to Dachau examines how the greatest cataclysm of modern history continues to stir the world’s memory in rich, surprising, and at times chillingly contradictory ways—a virtuosic journey at once moving and revelatory,” writes Erik Larson, author of The Demon of Unrest.
Meanwhile, Ken Burns, author of The American Revolution, called it “a riveting, serious tour de force.”
Smith is also the author of the 2021 narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, and was selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2021. It was adapted into a version for young readers in 2025.
He is also the author of two books of poetry, the New York Times bestselling collection Above Ground as well as Counting Descent. Both poetry collections were winners of the Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and finalists for NAACP Image Awards. He is a former National Poetry Slam champion and a recipient of the Jerome J. Shestack Prize from the American Poetry Review.
Previously, Smith taught high school English in Prince George’s County, Maryland, where he was named the Christine D. Sarbanes Teacher of the Year by the Maryland Humanities Council. He is the host of the YouTube series Crash Course Black American History.
Don’t miss out on your chance to hear Smith talk about his work and his new book, which serves as a powerful reminder that how we tell the story of the past shapes our understanding of the world today.