'Have Time to Talk to Each Other'

“I think as the world changes, we have to keep up. We have to note what is happening, and I think writing has always had a powerful corrective influence and possibility. We have to write about what's good, and we also have to write about parts of our culture that are not good, that are not working out. I think it takes a new eye.” – Lee Smith

Born in Virginia on Nov. 1, 1944,  Smith typically incorporates much of her background from the Southeastern United States into her works.  She has received writing awards, such as the O. Henry Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters 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.

“I write about people in small towns; I don't write about people living in big cities,” Smith said.  “My kind of storytelling depends upon people that have time to talk to each other.”  Imagine that!

Smith published her first novel 50 years ago, and                      

 in the intervening years, she’s published 13 more novels and four short story collections & her memoir. Her novel The Last Girls won the Southern Book Critics Circle Award.

She advises not to use up your entire life story in your very first efforts.  “I think what happens to young writers is that they use up every life experience that they have had up to that point for their first novel. Then you have to come up with something for the second novel, but you really don't have anything to say.”

 

 

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