Eliza Smith.

We always love to welcome back alumni from the three campuses here in Columbia, so it’s a particular pleasure to announce that Eliza Smith, a graduate of Mizzou’s J School, will be appearing at this year’s festival to speak on our panel about sex writing.

Eliza Smith is a writer and editor based in Missoula, Montana. Her work has appeared in The Cut, The New York Times, and elsewhere and has been awarded an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. With Haley Swanson, she is co-editor of the anthology Sex and the Single Woman: 24 Writers Reimagine Helen Gurley Brown’s Cult Classic. She earned her MA in magazine writing from the Missouri School of Journalism and MFA in creative nonfiction from Ohio State. She's currently at work on a memoir about marriage and autonomy, as told through four generations of her matrilineal line.