Winner, Kate Tufts Discovery Award, 2016

Winner, John C Zacharis Award 2016 from Ploushares

Winner, Lambda Literary Award, Gay Poetry, 2015

Finalist, Norma Farber First Book Award, Poetry Society of America, 2015

Finalist, Debulitzer, 2015

Chosen by Don Share for Boston Globe’s Best Poetry Books, 2014

The poems of [insert] boy have need of the body—desire it and lament its mortality—but over and again they assert Smith’s seemingly religious belief that every sound the body makes, every word and wail, is only possible through connection to some other plane of existence. This is a lovely, voice-driven book, singing high notes sharp as a switchblade.

—Jericho Brown, Please and The New Testament

Danez Smith lays down the gauntlet for all of us to speak our deepest truths with more elegance, more ferocity, and almost more beauty than a reader can bear.

—Gabrielle Calvocoressi