Lee Smith (fiction author)

Last updated

Lee Smith
Born (1944-11-01) November 1, 1944 (age 79)
Grundy, Virginia, U.S.
OccupationWriter
Alma mater Hollins College
Genre Fiction
SpouseJames Seay (divorced)
​
(m. 1985)​
Children2
Website
leesmith.com

Lee Smith (born November 1, 1944) is an American fiction writer who often incorporates her background from the American South in her works. She has received many writing awards, such as the O. Henry Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, and the North Carolina Award for Literature. Her novel The Last Girls was listed on the New York Times bestseller's list and won the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. [1]

Contents

Early life and education

Smith was born in 1944 in Grundy, Virginia, a small coal-mining town in the Appalachian Mountains, less than 10 miles from the Kentucky border. The Smith home sat on Main Street, and the Levisa Fork River ran just behind it. Her mother, Virginia Elizabeth née Marshall, known as "Gig", was a college graduate who taught school. Her father, Ernest Lee Smith, was the owner and operator of a Ben Franklin store in Grundy. [2]

Growing up in the Appalachian Mountains of southwestern Virginia, 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, Smith enrolled at Hollins College in Roanoke. She and fellow student Annie Dillard (the well-known essayist and novelist) became go-go dancers 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 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, and has received many writing awards. Her memoir Dimestore: A Writer’s Life published in 2016 and constructed as a series of personal essays, [3] is the story of her life in Grundy and beyond. [4]

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, [1] 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 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 in Raleigh, where she taught for many years. In 1983 her fifth novel, Oral History, became a Book-of-the-Month Club 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 (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 Last Girls in 2002.

On Agate Hill (2006), is set in the piedmont South during Reconstruction. The New York Times found the young narrator's voice to be occasionally unconvincing, but praised "Smith's inventive storytelling". [5]

Guests on Earth (2013) is based on the life of Zelda Fitzgerald. It is narrated by Evalina Toussaint, a former piano prodigy living in a mental hospital where she meets Zelda. [6] The Washington Post called it "a carefully researched, utterly charming novel". [7]

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.

In April 2023, Smith published Silver Alert.

Smith currently lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina with husband Hal Crowther. [1]

Bibliography

Novels

Short story collections

Memoir

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C. L. Moore</span> American science fiction and fantasy writer (1911–1987)

Catherine Lucille Moore was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, who first came to prominence in the 1930s writing as C. L. Moore. She was among the first women to write in the science fiction and fantasy genres. Moore's work paved the way for many other female speculative fiction writers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Tiptree Jr.</span> American science fiction writer (1915–1987)

Alice Bradley Sheldon was an American science fiction and fantasy author better known as James Tiptree Jr., a pen name she used from 1967 until her death. It was not publicly known until 1977 that James Tiptree Jr. was a woman. From 1974 to 1985 she also occasionally used the pen name Raccoona Sheldon. Tiptree was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leigh Brackett</span> American novelist and screenwriter (1915–1978)

Leigh Douglass Brackett was an American author and screenwriter. Nicknamed "the Queen of Space Opera," she was one of the most prominent female writers during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. As a screenwriter, she was best known for her collaborations with director Howard Hawks, mainly writing Westerns and crime films. She also worked on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), elements of which remained in the film; she died before it went into production.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John C. Wright (author)</span> American speculative fiction writer (born 1961)

John C. Wright is an American writer of science fiction and fantasy novels. He was a Nebula Award finalist for his fantasy novel Orphans of Chaos. Publishers Weekly said he "may be this fledgling century's most important new SF talent" when reviewing his debut novel, The Golden Age.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joan D. Vinge</span> American science fiction author (born 1948)

Joan D. Vinge is an American science fiction author. She is known for such works as her Hugo Award–winning novel The Snow Queen and its sequels, her series about the telepath named Cat, and her Heaven's Chronicles books. She also is the author of The Random House Book of Greek Myths (1999).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carson McCullers</span> American writer (1917–1967)

Carson McCullers was an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts in a small town of the Southern United States. Her other novels have similar themes. Most are set in the Deep South.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nina Kiriki Hoffman</span> American science fiction writer

Nina Kiriki Hoffman is an American fantasy, science fiction and horror writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tanith Lee</span> British science fiction and fantasy writer (1947 – 2015)

Tanith Lee was a British science fiction and fantasy writer. She wrote more than 90 novels and 300 short stories, and was the winner of multiple World Fantasy Society Derleth Awards, the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Horror. She also wrote a children's picture book, and many poems. She wrote two episodes of the BBC science fiction series Blake's 7 .

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minette Walters</span> English writer

Minette Caroline Mary Walters DL is an English writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Dessen</span> American novelist

Sarah Dessen is an American novelist who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Born in Illinois, Dessen graduated from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Her first book, That Summer, was published in 1996. She has since published more than a dozen other novels and novellas. In 2017, Dessen won the Margaret Edwards Award for some of her work. Two of her books were adapted into the 2003 film How to Deal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sujata Massey</span> American novelist

Sujata Massey is an American mystery author and historical fiction novelist. Her books are published in English in the US and Canada, the United Kingdom and India, and Australia/New Zealand. Massey’s novels are also available in different languages and formats in Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain and Thailand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Hand</span> American writer (born 1957)

Elizabeth Hand is an American writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kelly Link</span> American editor and author

Kelly Link is an American editor and writer. Mainly known as an author of short stories, she published her first novel The Book of Love in 2024. While some of her fiction falls more clearly within genre categories, many of her stories might be described as slipstream or magic realism: a combination of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and literary fiction. Among other honors, she has won a Hugo Award, three Nebula Awards, and a World Fantasy Award for her fiction, and she was one of the recipients of the 2018 MacArthur "Genius" Grant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martha Wells</span> American speculative fiction writer (born 1964)

Martha Wells is an American writer of speculative fiction. She has published a number of fantasy novels, young adult novels, media tie-ins, short stories, and nonfiction essays on fantasy and science fiction subjects. Her novels have been translated into twelve languages. Wells has won four Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards and three Locus Awards for her science fiction series The Murderbot Diaries. She is also known for her fantasy series Ile-Rien and The Books of the Raksura. Wells is praised for the complex, realistically detailed societies she creates; this is often credited to her academic background in anthropology.

Denise Giardina is an American novelist. Her book Storming Heaven was a Discovery Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and received the 1987 W. D. Weatherford Award for the best published work about the Appalachian South. The Unquiet Earth received an American Book Award and the Lillian Smith Book Award for fiction. Her 1998 novel Saints and Villains was awarded the Boston Book Review fiction prize and was semifinalist for the International Dublin Literary Award. Giardina is an ordained Episcopal Church deacon, a community activist, and a former candidate for governor of West Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mur Lafferty</span> American podcaster and writer

Mur Lafferty is an American podcaster and writer based in Durham, North Carolina. She was the editor and host of Escape Pod from 2010, when she took over from Steve Eley, until 2012, when she was replaced by Norm Sherman. She is also the host and creator of the podcast I Should Be Writing. Until July 2007, she was host and co-editor of Pseudopod. She was the Editor-in-Chief of the Escape Artists short fiction magazine Mothership Zeta until it went on hiatus in 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jesse Lee Kercheval</span> American poet (born 1956)

Jesse Lee Kercheval is an American poet, memoirist, translator, fiction writer and visual artist. She is an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author of numerous books, notably Building Fiction, The Museum of Happiness, Space and Underground Women, and she is a translator of Uruguayan poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alaya Dawn Johnson</span> American writer of speculative fiction

Alaya Dawn Johnson is an American writer of speculative fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis D. Rubin Jr.</span> American writer

Louis Decimus Rubin Jr. was a noted American literary scholar and critic, writing teacher, publisher, and writer. He is credited with helping to establish Southern literature as a recognized area of study within the field of American literature, as well as serving as a teacher and mentor for writers at Hollins College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and for founding Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, a publishing company nationally recognized for fiction by Southern writers. He died in Pittsboro, North Carolina and is buried at the Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim Cemetery in Charleston, South Carolina.

<i>Dimestore: A Writers Life</i> Book by Lee Smith

Dimestore: A Writer's Life is a memoir by Lee Smith about her childhood in Grundy, Virginia. It was the first book written by Smith that was not fiction.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Weeks, Isaac (October 12, 2013). "Bookstores celebrate Southern writer Lee Smith's 45 years of publishing". Raleigh News and Observer. Archived from the original on January 16, 2014. Retrieved January 15, 2014.
  2. ↑ ""Virginia, Bureau of Vital Statistics, County Marriage Registers, 1853-1935"". Familysearch.org.
  3. ↑ "Lee Smith | Dimestore".
  4. ↑ Webb, Gina. "Lee Smith writes what she knows in memoir 'Dimestore'". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Atlanta Courier-Journal. Retrieved January 29, 2017.
  5. ↑ Hoffman, Roy (October 8, 2006). "History's Child". New York Times. Retrieved January 15, 2014.
  6. ↑ Wolfe Boynton, Cindy (October 19, 2013). "REVIEW: 'Guests on Earth,' by Lee Smith". Minneapolis Star Tribune. Retrieved January 15, 2014.
  7. ↑ See, Carolyn (November 15, 2013). "GUESTS ON EARTH, by Lee Smith (review)". Washington Post. Retrieved January 15, 2014.
  8. ↑ Smith, Lee (2006). On Agate Hill : a novel (1st ed.). Chapel Hill: Algonquin. ISBN   1-56512-452-9.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.