Award-winning journalist, Danyel Smith, is author of the critically-acclaimed "Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop". Smith is also creator/host of the popular Spotify Original Black Girl Songbook podcast, which centers the sounds and stories of black women.

Smith’s CV includes being a producer and writer at ESPN, a Knight fellow at Stanford University, an arts fellow at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, and a 2021 Yaddo fellow. She was editor of Billboard, and the first woman and first black person to serve as editor-in-chief of VIBE. She has written two novels — "More Like Wrestling" (Crown, 2003) and "Bliss" (Crown, 2005), and Smith’s recent work appears in the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and at NPR.

Smith lives in Southern California with her husband.

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