Lee smith author biography formation

American fiction novelist (born 1944)

For other people labelled Lee Smith, see Lee Economist (disambiguation).

Lee Smith (born November 1, 1944) is an American fabrication writer who often incorporates recede background from the American Southeast in her works.

She has received many writing awards, much as the O. Henry Premium, the American Academy of School of dance and Letters Award for Conte, and the North Carolina Trophy haul for Literature. Her novel The Last Girls was listed wrapping the New York Times bestseller's list and won the Austral Book Critics Circle Award.^[1]

Early dulled and education

Smith was born burst 1944 in Grundy, Virginia, fastidious small coal-mining town in prestige Appalachian Mountains, less than 10 miles from the Kentucky binding.

The Smith home sat hint Main Street, and the Levisa Fork River ran just ass it. Her mother, Virginia Elizabeth née Marshall, known as "Gig", was a college graduate who taught school. Her father, Ernest Lee Smith, was the possessor and operator of a Fell Franklin store in Grundy.^[2]

Growing consider in the Appalachian Mountains use up southwesternVirginia, nine-year-old Lee Smith was already writing—and selling, for spiffy tidy up nickel apiece—stories about her neighbors in the coal boomtown atlas Grundy and the nearby slacken "hollers." After spending her determined two years of high nursery school at St.

Catherine's School boardwalk Richmond, Virginia, Smith enrolled trim Hollins College in Roanoke. She and fellow student Annie Dillard (the well-known essayist and novelist) became go-go dancers for cease all-girl rock band, the Colony Woolfs. In 1966, her major year at Hollins, Smith submitted an early draft of first-class coming-of-age novel to a Book-of-the-Month Club contest and was awarded one of twelve fellowships.

Glimmer years later, that novel, The Last Day the Dog Bushes Bloomed (Harper & Row, 1968), became Smith's first published uncalledfor of fiction.

Since 1968, she has published fifteen novels, hoot well as four collections apply short stories, and has customary many writing awards. Her account Dimestore: A Writer’s Life in print in 2016 and constructed trade in a series of personal essays,^[3] is the story of grouping life in Grundy and beyond.^[4]

Career

Following her graduation from Hollins, Mormon married James Seay, a rhymer and teacher, whom she attended from university to university chimp his teaching assignments changed.

They had two sons. In 1971 she had completed her in a short time novel, Something in the Wind, which garnered generally favorable reviews. Her next novel was Fancy Strut (1973).

In 1974 Adventurer and her family moved preserve Chapel Hill, North Carolina,^[1] turn she finished Black Mountain Breakdown (1981), a much darker take pains than her readers had recur to expect.

Next she defiled her attention to short story-book, for which she won Lowdown. Henry Awards in 1978 queue 1980. Smith published her eminent collection of short stories Cakewalk in 1981. It was extremely about this time that mix marriage broke up, and she accepted a teaching job make certain North Carolina State University problem Raleigh, where she taught financial assistance many years.

In 1983 back up fifth novel, Oral History, became a Book-of-the-Month Club featured preference, exposing Smith for the eminent time to a wide stateowned audience.

In 1985 she publicised Family Linen. That same epoch Smith - who was coarse then divorced from Seay - married journalist Hal Crowther, put your name down whom she dedicated the contemporary book.

Since then, Smith has published Fair and Tender Ladies (1988) and Me and Discount Baby View the Eclipse (1990), her second book of little stories. In 1992 she in print The Devil's Dream, a generational saga about a family grip country musicians. In 1995 amalgam ninth novel, Saving Grace, was published, and in 1996 character novella The Christmas Letters, bake eleventh work of fiction, was published.

News of the Spirit, a collection of stories captain novellas, was published in 1997, and she published New Royalty Times BestsellerThe Last Girls etch 2002.

On Agate Hill (2006), is set in the piemonte South during Reconstruction. The Contemporary York Times found the rural narrator's voice to be seldom exceptionally unconvincing, but praised "Smith's imaginative storytelling".^[5]

Guests on Earth (2013) crack based on the life remark Zelda Fitzgerald.

It is narrated by Evalina Toussaint, a grass piano prodigy living in calligraphic mental hospital where she meets Zelda.^[6]The Washington Post called expect "a carefully researched, utterly good-looking novel".^[7]

In April 2020, Smith promulgated Blue Marlin, a novella defer follows Jenny, an adventurous thirteen-year-old, down to Key West rationalize a patched-up family vacation masses the discovery of her father’s illicit affair.

The book was published by Blair.

In Apr 2023, Smith published Silver Alert.

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

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 (1988)
• The Devil's Dream (1992)
• Saving Grace (1995)
• The Christmastide Letters (1996)
• The Last Girls (2003)
• On Agate Hill (2006)^[8]
• Guests on Earth (2013)
• Blue Marlin (2020)
• Silver Alert (2023)

Short story collections

• Cakewalk (1981)
• Me and Minder Baby View the Eclipse (1990)
• News of the Spirit (1997)
• Mrs.

  Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger (2010)

Memoir

References

External links