Hazel Smith has been a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Creative Communication at the University of Canberra, as well as Deputy Director of the Canberra Centre for Writing. She completed a PhD in contemporary American poetry at Nottingham University in 1988, and taught creative writing in the School of English at the University of New South Wales from 1991 to 2001.
As a performance poet, Smith has worked in the areas of experimental writing, multi-media work and hypertext. Her other works include Improvisation, Hypermedia and the Arts Since 1945 (1997) and Hyperscapes in the Poetry of Frank O'Hara : Difference, Homosexuality, Topography (2000). She also provided text and voice for the sound recording Returning the Angles, (2001), a collaboration with musician Roger Dean. Smith has also been a violinist and leader of chamber ensembles 'Australysis', 'Lysis' and 'Sonant'.