D. K. Smith was born in Rochester NY and educated at Yale and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has worked as a short-order cook, a Kodak film processor, a dish-washer, a London stringer for Newsweek, a furniture mover, a reporter, a secretary, and a telephone receptionist. He has cooked duck a l'orange for thirty-five people and hors d'oeuvres for a hundred. He holds a Ph.D. in Medieval and Renaissance Literature from the University of Iowa and teaches at Kansas State University.