In 2021, M.L. Smoker was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Smoker, alongside Melissa Kwasny, will partner with seven Montana art and historical museums, selecting individual works, writing ekphrastic poems in response, and holding workshops on site at the museums for area youth to learn to write their own ekphrastic poems. The project, which builds on the success of a previous collaboration with the Missoula Art Museum, will culminate in a webinar on ekphrastic poetry through the museums’ websites and Humanities Montana’s Speakers in the Schools program.