Lytton Smith is the author of two books of poems, The All-Purpose Magical Tent (Nightboat 2009) and While You Were Approaching the Spectacle and Before You were Transformed by It (Nightboat 2012), and the translator of the Icelandic novels The Ambassador by Bragi Ólafsson (Open Letter 2010), Hér by Kristín Ómarsdóttir (Open Letter 2012) and Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller by Guðbergur Bergsson (2017).

He is Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at University of Plymouth and has been completing his dissertation on open field poetics and citizenship in post-1945 United States at Columbia University. Since 2005, he has worked in poetry publicity with individual authors and small presses, including Four Way Books, Persea Books, and Blind Tiger Poetry, a group which aims to find innovative ways to promote contemporary poetry. His poems, reviews, and translations have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, The Atlantic, The Believer, Boston Review, Tin House, Verse, Words Without Borders, and the anthology All That Mighty Heart: London Poems.