Dr. Mark Smith-Soto is Professor Emeritus of Romance Languages (Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures) at UNCG Greensboro. Dr. Smith-Soto also served as editor/poetry editor of International Poetry Review from 1991 to 2022, and as director of the Center for Creative Writing in the Arts from 2005 to 2015.

Dr. Smith-Soto is a 2005 winner of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in creative writing and his poetry has been nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize. His poetry has appeared in Kenyon Review, Literary Review, Missouri Review, Nimrod, Poetry East, Quarterly West, The Sun, and many other literary journals. He has authored four award winning chapbooks (Green Mango Collage, Shafts, Waiting Room and Splices) and three full-length poetry collections: Our Lives Are Rivers, University Press of Florida, 2003; Any Second Now, Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2006 and Time Pieces, Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2015. His work of translation, Fever Season: Selected Poetry of Ana Istarú (2010), and his memoir in verse Berkeley Prelude 1970-1975, a lyrical narrative (2012, were both published by Unicorn Press.

An avid amateur playwright, seven of his short one-acts have been produced by the Greensboro Playwrights' Forum. A verse play, Deal With This: Trio From The Holocaust Museum, produced by Theatre Orange of the Arts Center of Carrboro and Chapel Hill as one of ten winners of their 2003 "Ten by Ten in the Triangle" festival competition, was published in the anthology Thirty-five by Ten (Dramatic Publishers, 2005).