Award-winning poet and author Patricia Smith inaugurates this semester’s Writers-on-the-Shore series Wednesday, February 27. She reads from her works at 7 p.m. in the Worcester Room of the Commons. With four National Poetry Slam individual championships, Smith has shared the stage with Pulitzer Prize winners and U.S. poet laureates, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg and Adrienne Rich, as well as former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright and entertainers Marilyn Manson and Viggo Mortenson. Her collection Blood Dazzler, chronicling the human, emotional and physical toll exacted by Hurricane Katrina, was a National Book Award finalist and one of National Public Radio’s “Top Books of 2008.” Her most recent collection, Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, also was a National Book Award finalist. Smith’s work is featured in the 2011 edition of Best American Poetry and Best American Essays. She also edited and contributed to the crime fiction anthology Staten Island Noir. The two-time Pushcart Prize winner has earned a coveted MacDowell Fellowship and was featured on the cover of the 100th anniversary issue of Poetry magazine. Sponsored by the English Department and SU’s Writers-on-the-Shore series, admission to her reading is free and the public is invited.