Disgraced media figure Patricia Smith

Writer Patricia Smith has bounced back nicely as a poet after having had to resign from the Boston Globe in the late 1990s.

Smith wrote a Globe metro column that had been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, but revelations appeared that she had fabricated quotations, events and even people in some of her work.

Since that time, she has remained out of newspaper journalism but has made quite a hit as a performance poet. In fact, she has won the National Poetry slam competition four times. The Chicago native, who is African American, has won a variety of impressive awards and is also a jazz vocalist.