San­dra Smith was born and raised in New York City. As an under­grad­u­ate, she spent one year study­ing at the Sor­bonne and fell in love with Paris. Imme­di­ate­ly after fin­ish­ing her BA, she was accept­ed to do a Mas­ter’s Degree at New York Uni­ver­si­ty, in con­junc­tion with the Sor­bonne, and so lived in Paris for anoth­er year. After com­plet­ing her MA, she moved to Cam­bridge, where she began super­vis­ing in 20th Cen­tu­ry French Lit­er­a­ture, Mod­ern French Dra­ma and Trans­la­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty. Soon after­wards, she was accept­ed to study for a PhD at Clare Col­lege, research­ing the Sur­re­al­ist The­atre in France between the two World Wars. San­dra Smith taught French Lit­er­a­ture and Lan­guage at Robin­son Col­lege, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge for many years and has been a guest lec­tur­er and pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, Har­vard and Sarah Lawrence College.