Lee Smith (born November 1, 1944) is an American fiction author who typically incorporates much of her background from the Southeastern United States in her works. She has received writing awards, such as the
O. Henry Award, the
American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...
Award for Fiction, the North Carolina Award for Literature, and, in April 2013, was the first recipient of
Mercer University's Sidney Lanier Prize for Southern Literature. Her novel ''The Last Girls'' was listed on the ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' bestseller's list and won the Southern Book Critics Circle Award.
''Mrs Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger'', a collection of new and selected stories, was published in 2010.
Early life and education
Smith was born in 1944 in
Grundy, Virginia
Grundy is a town in Buchanan County, Virginia, United States, an area located within the Appalachian Mountains region. It is the county seat of Buchanan County. The town is home to the Appalachian School of Law. The population was 875 as of the ...
, a small coal-mining town in the
Appalachian Mountains
The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, (french: Appalaches), are a system of mountains in eastern to northeastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. They ...
, less than 10 miles from the
Kentucky
Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia to ...
border. The Smith home sat on Main Street, and the
Levisa Fork River ran just behind it. Her mother, Gig, was a college graduate who had come to Grundy to teach school. Her father, Ernest, was the owner and operator of a
Ben Franklin store in Grundy.
Growing up in the Appalachian Mountains of
southwestern
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
, nine-year-old Lee Smith was already writing—and selling, for a nickel apiece—stories about her neighbors in the coal boomtown of Grundy and the nearby isolated "hollers." After spending her last two years of high school at
St. Catherine's School in
Richmond, Virginia
(Thus do we reach the stars)
, image_map =
, mapsize = 250 px
, map_caption = Location within Virginia
, pushpin_map = Virginia#USA
, pushpin_label = Richmond
, pushpin_m ...
, Smith enrolled at
Hollins College
Hollins University is a private university in Hollins, Virginia. Founded in 1842 as Valley Union Seminary in the historical settlement of Botetourt Springs, it is one of the oldest institutions of higher education for women in the United States ...
in
Roanoke. She and fellow student
Annie Dillard
Annie Dillard (born April 30, 1945) is an American author, best known for her narrative prose in both fiction and non-fiction. She has published works of poetry, essays, prose, and literary criticism, as well as two novels and one memoir. Her 19 ...
(the well-known essayist and novelist) became
go-go dancers
Go-go dancers are dancers who are employed to entertain crowds at nightclubs or other venues where music is played. Go-go dancing originated in the early 1960s at the French bar Whisky a Gogo located in Juan-les-Pins. The bar's name was taken ...
for an all-girl rock band, the Virginia Woolfs. In 1966, her senior year at Hollins, Smith submitted an early draft of a
coming-of-age novel
In literary criticism, a ''Bildungsroman'' (, plural ''Bildungsromane'', ) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood ( coming of age), in which character change is imp ...
to a Book-of-the-Month Club contest and was awarded one of twelve fellowships. Two years later, that novel, ''The Last Day the Dog Bushes Bloomed'' (Harper & Row, 1968), became Smith's first published work of fiction.
Since 1968, she has published fifteen novels, as well as four collections of
short stories
A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...
, and has received eight major writing awards including the Sidney Lanier Prize for Southern Literature in 2013. Her memoir ''Dimestore: A Writer’s Life'' published in 2016 is the story of her life in Grundy and beyond.
Career
Following her graduation from Hollins, Smith married James Seay, a poet and teacher, whom she accompanied from university to university as his teaching assignments changed. They had two sons. In 1971 she had completed her second novel, ''Something in the Wind'', which garnered generally favorable reviews. Her next novel was ''Fancy Strut'' (1973).
In 1974 Smith and her family moved to
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Chapel Hill is a town in Orange, Durham and Chatham counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Its population was 61,960 in the 2020 census, making Chapel Hill the 17th-largest municipality in the state. Chapel Hill, Durham, and the state ca ...
,
[ where she finished ''Black Mountain Breakdown'' (1981), a much darker work than her readers had come to expect. Next she turned her attention to short stories, for which she won ]O. Henry Awards
The O. Henry Award is an annual American award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American short-story writer O. Henry.
The ''PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories'' is an annual collection of the year's twenty best ...
in 1978 and 1980. Smith published her first collection of short stories ''Cakewalk'' in 1981. It was also about this time that her marriage broke up, and she accepted a teaching job at North Carolina State University
North Carolina State University (NC State) is a public land-grant research university in Raleigh, North Carolina. Founded in 1887 and part of the University of North Carolina system, it is the largest university in the Carolinas. The universit ...
in Raleigh
Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the seat of Wake County in the United States. It is the second-most populous city in North Carolina, after Charlotte. Raleigh is the tenth-most populous city in the Southeas ...
, where she taught for many years. In 1983 her fifth novel, ''Oral History'', became a Book-of-the-Month Club
Book of the Month (founded 1926) is a United States subscription-based e-commerce service that offers a selection of five to seven new hardcover books each month to its members. Books are selected and endorsed by a panel of judges, and members c ...
featured selection, exposing Smith for the first time to a wide national audience.
In 1985 she published ''Family Linen''. That same year Smith - who was by then divorced from Seay - married journalist Hal Crowther, to whom she dedicated the new book.
Since then, Smith has published ''Fair and Tender Ladies
''Fair and Tender Ladies'' is a novel by Lee Smith published in 1988. It won the W.D. Weatherford Award that year.
''Fair and Tender Ladies'' is an epistolary novel consisting entirely of letters written by its protagonist, Ivy Rowe, to numer ...
'' (1988) and ''Me and My Baby View the Eclipse'' (1990), her second book of short stories. In 1992 she published ''The Devil's Dream'', a generational saga about a family of country musicians. In 1995 her ninth novel, ''Saving Grace'', was published, and in 1996 the novella ''The Christmas Letters'', her eleventh work of fiction, was published. ''News of the Spirit'', a collection of stories and novellas, was published in 1997, and she published New York Times Bestseller
''The New York Times'' Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. John Bear, ''The #1 New York Times Best Seller: intriguing facts about the 484 books that have been #1 New York Times ...
''The Last Girls'' in 2002.
''On Agate Hill'' (2006), is set in the piedmont South during Reconstruction
Reconstruction may refer to:
Politics, history, and sociology
*Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company
*'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...
. ''The New York Times'' found the young narrator's voice to be occasionally unconvincing, but praised "Smith's inventive storytelling".
''Guests on Earth'' (2013) is based on the life of Zelda Fitzgerald
Zelda Fitzgerald (; July 24, 1900 – March 10, 1948) was an American novelist, painter, dancer, and socialite.
Born in Montgomery, Alabama, she was noted for her beauty and high spirits, and was dubbed by her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald a ...
. It is narrated by Evalina Toussaint, a former piano prodigy living in a mental hospital where she meets Zelda. ''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' called it "a carefully researched, utterly charming novel".
In April 2020, Smith published ''Blue Marlin'', a novella that follows Jenny, an adventurous thirteen-year-old, down to Key West for a patched-up family vacation following the discovery of her father’s illicit affair. The book was published by Blair.
Smith currently lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina
The town of Hillsborough is the county seat of Orange County, North Carolina, United States and is located along the Eno River. The population was 6,087 in 2010, but it grew rapidly to 9,660 by 2020.
Its name was unofficially shortened to "Hillsb ...
with husband Hal Crowther.[
]
Bibliography
Novels
*''The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed'' (1968)
*''Something in the Wind'' (1971)
*''Fancy Strut'' (1973)
*''Black Mountain Breakdown'' (1980)
*''Oral History'' (1983)
*''Family Linen'' (1985)
*''Fair and Tender Ladies
''Fair and Tender Ladies'' is a novel by Lee Smith published in 1988. It won the W.D. Weatherford Award that year.
''Fair and Tender Ladies'' is an epistolary novel consisting entirely of letters written by its protagonist, Ivy Rowe, to numer ...
'' (1988)
*''The Devil's Dream'' (1992)
*''Saving Grace'' (1995)
*''The Christmas Letters'' (1996)
*''The Last Girls'' (2003)
*''On Agate Hill'' (2006)
*''Guests on Earth'' (2013)
*''Blue Marlin'' (2020)
*''Silver Alert'' (2023)
Short story collections
*''Cakewalk'' (1981)
*''Me and My Baby View the Eclipse'' (1990)
*''News of the Spirit'' (1997)
*''Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger'' (2010)
Memoir
*'' Dimestore: A Writer's Life'' (2016)
References
External links
Lee Smith – the official author website
Audio: Lee Smith at the Key West Literary Seminar, 2008: Keynote Address
Audio: Lee Smith at the Key West Literary Seminar, 2005: "Humor"
*Lee Smith reading on November 15, 2006
* ttps://www.lib.ncsu.edu/findingaids/mc00203 Guide to the Lee Marshall Smith Papers 1956-2019br>Guide to the Ben Jennings Papers about Lee Smith 1982-2007
{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Lee
1944 births
Living people
People from Grundy, Virginia
20th-century American novelists
21st-century American novelists
American women novelists
American women short story writers
People from Hillsborough, North Carolina
Novelists from North Carolina
Hollins University alumni
20th-century American women writers
21st-century American women writers
20th-century American short story writers
21st-century American short story writers