Rylee Smith is a doctoral student in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. She works broadly on the 20th century, with particular interests in Virginia Woolf, queer theory, and the environmental humanities. In 2024, Rylee was awarded the Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize for her essay entitled "Negativity, or, the Style of Butch Pragmatism," which explores questions of tone, narrativity, and the afterlives of Lee Edelman's insistence on social negativity in AK Summers's 2015 graphic memoir Pregnant Butch. Rylee holds a BA in English and the Study of Women and Gender from Smith College and is a proud first generation college graduate.