Willa Smart is a poet and PhD Candidate in Cultural Studies at UC Davis, with dual designated emphases in Feminist Theory and Research as well as Science and Technology Studies. Her dissertation tracks the alignment of transfemininity with racialized sensitivity and “feeling” in trans life writing and psychoanalytic clinical practice across the long twentieth century. Her critical writing has been published in Parapraxis Magazine, TSQ, differences, Ki by Qui Parle, Psychoanalysis and History, among others. Her first book of poetry, Switch Wish, was published in 2020 by Meekling Press. A second book, On Getting What I Want, was published by Krupskaya Books in 2026.