Erin Elizabeth Smith grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, graduating from Lexington High School in 1998. From there she fled to Fredericksburg, Virginia where she briefly attended Mary Washington College. In her one year there, she became more active in the gay and lesbian community, was a frequent contributor to the quarterly arts magazine, and produced her play, "Aborting Jesus," for the school's second stage.

She soon became disillusioned with the institution, however, and moved to Providence, Rhode Island where she began Stirring : A Literary Collection, a monthly literary publication, which is now the keystone of Sundress Publications, of which Erin is the founder. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in over fifty literary magazines including Third Coast, Crab Orchard Review, West Branch, Willow Springs, Good Foot, Natural Bridge, Gulf Stream, Bellingham Review, Wisconsin Review, Reed Magazine, Slipstream, Cimarron Review, RHINO, Harpur Palate, The Cortland Review, and The Pinch , among others. Erin is an alumna of the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets (2003) and Summer Literary Seminars' program in St. Petersburg, Russia (2005), and she is also the 2005 Marc Penka Poetry Award winner. Her first book of poetry, The Fear of Being Found, was released from Three Candles Press in 2008.

Erin graduated with her BA in English - Creative Writing from Binghamton University in May of 2004. From 2004 to 2006, she lived in Champaign, Illinois where she attended the University of Illinois's MFA program in Poetry. There she taught Composition and Creative Writing and served as a reader for Ninth Letter. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi, where she continues to publish Stirring and serves as the managing editor of the Best of the Net Anthology.