I Can't Keep My Own Secrets: Six-Word Memoirs by Teens Famous & Obscure

Larry Smith lives with his wife Ann in Huron, Ohio where he is professor emeritus of English and humanities from Firelands College of Bowling Green State University. He has studied at the Thoreau Institute and has written on the life and writings of Henry David Thoreau. He is the author of eight books of poetry, five books of fiction, and literary biographies of writers Kenneth Patchen and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Smith is also writer-producer of two video programs on poets James Wright and Kenneth Patchen done with filmmaker Tom Koba.

His own memoirs have appeared in Milldust and Roses (2005) and The Thick of Thin: Memoirs of a Working-Class Writer (2017). He and Mei Hui Huang are co-translators of Chinese Zen Poems: What Hold Has This Mountain? and The Kanshi Poems Taigu Ryokan (both from Bottom Dog Press). In 1999 he received the Ohioana Poetry Award for his contributions to poetry in Ohio. Smith is the director of Bottom Dog Press, an independent Ohio literary publisher for over 30 years.