Cathy Smith Bowers is a poet and native of South Carolina. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, Poetry, Shenandoah, The Southern Poetry Review, The Southern Review, and Kenyon Review. In 2005, Bowers wrote the introduction to Hub City's Hidden Voices, an anthology of creative writing by clients and friends of Piedmont Care Inc., the nonprofit agency in Spartanburg that serves HIV-positive people and their families.

Bowers' first book, The Love that Ended Yesterday in Texas, was published in 1992, upon winning the first-book competition from Texas Tech University Press. Her other titles include Traveling in Time of Danger (1999) and A Book of Minutes (2004). She is the recipient of the 1990 General Electric Award for Younger Writers, the 1992 award for the South Carolina Fiction project, and in 1995, she was selected for North Carolina's Poetry Live Series. Bowers also received the 2003 Fuqua Distinguished Educator Award from Queens University of Charlotte, where she is a poet-in-residence. In summer 2007, she will participate in the Sundown Poetry Series at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina.