D.C. Spotlight: Mr. Smith Arrives in Washington

Claiborne “Clay” Smith, director of literary initiatives on the Library of Congress, arrived in Washington, D.C., final October, when he took over for longtime director Marie Arana, who left to jot down a e book. One of many director’s main obligations is to supervise the Nationwide Ebook Pageant, and Smith has loads of expertise in that space—his earlier job was director of the San Antonio Ebook Pageant. Initially from West Texas, he says he has skilled “just a little” tradition shock since arriving within the nation’s capital.

Smith has moved round earlier than, leaving Texas after incomes his classics diploma at UT Austin and turning into books editor for the Austin Chronicle within the Nineteen Nineties. Whereas working in Manhattan within the early 2000s, he received a name from the Texas Ebook Pageant asking if he was within the place of literary director. “I assumed that sounded fairly nice, as a result of I wasn’t loving residing in New York Metropolis as a lot as I used to be advised I used to be imagined to,” he remembers. Being again in his residence state was much less the draw than studying “the way to program outdoors of New York,” he says.

Smith returned to journalism in 2012 as editor-in-chief of Kirkus Opinions, however quickly heard from the San Antonio Ebook Pageant. “Their director had left, and so they had been in a decent spot,” he says. “So, for seven years, I had two jobs.” In the meantime, his husband started legislation faculty in San Antonio, so in 2019 Smith stop Kirkus and devoted himself to the competition.

“I by no means thought I’d find yourself in Washington with a federal authorities job,” Smith says. “One of many major causes I utilized was the Nationwide Ebook Pageant. I do really feel that it offers me the prospect to program for the nation at a second when it’s vital to consider the entire nation.”

This yr’s theme, actually, is “Books Deliver Us Collectively.” Smith notes that has a literal interpretation in 2022, because the NBF goes again to an in-person occasion. “Attendees will likely be along with different e book lovers.”

For the primary time, the Library of Congress will host a panel with the D.C. Public Libraries on the NBF, kicking off the DCPL’s annual DC Reads program. That’s simply a part of how Smith and his workforce plan to deliver new audiences into the long-running competition. “For us it’s not only a query of range but in addition of accessibility,” he says. “Each competition has to develop. So how do I wish to change this one, which is so properly established? I don’t wish to mess with the issues we do proper, however we do want range of subject material.”

One change that’s already in progress, Smith notes, is a “life-style stage,” for “perhaps the most important publishing class of all,” which incorporates self-help, service, and handbooks. “Any session attended will embrace particular workout routines or data,” he explains. “If an creator has written about mindfulness, we’d have her conduct a five-minute mindfulness session for the viewers.”

Smith has already realized that a part of working as a authorities worker means accepting that new issues take time. “It’s been an enormous studying curve for me,” he says, “however [librarian of Congress] Dr. Hayden has inspired me to play the lengthy sport.” Because the director of Literary Initiatives, Smith additionally oversees the nation’s literary ambassadorships, together with the poet laureate, the nationwide ambassador for younger folks’s literature, and the Library of Congress Prize for American Literatures, together with the Bollingen Prize in Poetry. And there are additionally a number of year-round D.C. occasions, together with three in fall 2022 for kids and Dwell on the Library, which contains a latest interview by Smith of novelist Pleasure Williams.

Dwell occasions within the district matter, however so does increasing the attain of “America’s Library”: “We’ve a willingness to step out of our personal large footprint and work with different library methods,” Smith says. “We additionally work with all the state facilities for the e book to create programming that displays and provides to the NBF lineups. The attain of the Library of Congress is one thing that issues to us fairly a bit.

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