Ron Smith is a Canadian poet, author, playwright, former academic and the founder of Oolichan Books. Smith was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. He studied English literature at University of Leeds (M.A. in 1970), and returned to Vancouver Island in 1971 to teach in the English Department at Malaspina University-College, now Vancouver Island University, in Nanaimo, British Columbia, where he taught English and creative writing for 28 years. He has also taught in Italy, England and the USA. Smith also holds a degree from the University of British Columbia (1969) and received an Honorary Doctorate from UBC in 2002. He was the Fulbright Chair in Creative Writing at Arizona State University (2005-2006). In 1974 he founded the publishing company Oolichan Book in Lantzville, a small seaside village on Vancouver Island. Smith lived there until 2009 with his wife, Patricia Smith, also a writer. They now live in Nanoose Bay, BC. From 1988 to 1991 he was the fiction editor for Douglas & McIntyre. He has been called "instrumental" in helping to start the first aboriginal publishing house, Theytus Books, in 1981. He is the author of a suite of poems, Seasonal (1984), a long poem, A Buddha Named Baudelaire (1988), two collections of poetry and a collection of fiction, What Men Know About Women (1999). He is also the author of the children's book, Elf the Eagle (2007) which was short-listed for two awards (BC Book Prizes and the Willow Award, Young Readers, Saskatchewan), and the non-fiction titles Kid Dynamite: The Gerry James Story (2011) and The Defiant Mind: Living Inside a Stroke (2016). Excerpts from the book were translated into 16 languages and published in over 20 countries by Reader's Digest.. The Book was awarded the Ippy Gold Medal for memoir and longlisted for the George Ryga Award. His most recent book, Improbable Journeys: from Crossing the Himalayas on Horseback to a Career in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, a medical memoir, he co-authored with Dr. Bernie Binns and published in 2020. Smith also reviews books, and he edited the anthology of Canadian West Coast short fiction: Rainshadow: Stories from Vancouver Island (1982). His poetry has been translated by Ada Donati and published in a bilingual edition in Ferrera, Italy.