Erin Elizabeth Smith grew up in Columbia, SC, eventually moving to Fredericksburg, VA where she briefly attended Mary Washington College. There she 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.

Erin's poetry and nonfiction have appeared in numberous literary magazines including The Florida Review, Third Coast, Crab Orchard Review, West Branch, Willow Springs, Natural Bridge, Bellingham Review, Cimarron Review, RHINO,, and The Pinch, among others. 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, and from 2004 to 2006, she lived in Champaign, IL where she attended the University of Illinois's MFA program in Poetry. She recently completed her PhD in Creative Writing from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi, where she continued to publish Stirring and served as the managing editor of the Best of the Net Anthology. In the Fall of 2009, Erin will be moving with her husband to Knoxville, TN where she will be joining the English Department at the University of Tennessee.