This Goodly Land

Lee Smith (November 1, 1944–present)

Other Names Used

• Lee Marshall Smith: full name

Alabama Connections

• Birmingham, Jefferson County: spent childhood summers there with an aunt
• Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa County: brief adult residence

Selected Works

• Smith, Lee. The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed. New York: Harper & Row, 1968. Rpt. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994.
• Smith, Lee. Fancy Strut. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. Rpt. New York: Ballantine Books, 2004.
• Smith, Lee. Cakewalk. New York: Putnam, 1981. Rpt. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996.
• Smith, Lee. Oral History. New York: Putnam, 1983. Rpt. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993.
• Smith, Lee. Family Linen. New York: Putnam, 1985. Rpt. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996.
• Smith, Lee. Fair and Tender Ladies. New York: Putnam, 1988. Rpt. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993.
• Smith, Lee. The Devil's Dream. New York: Putnam, 1992.
• Smith, Lee. The Last Girls: A Novel. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2002.
• Smith, Lee. On Agate Hill: A Novel. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2006.

Literary Awards

• "Mrs. Darcy Meets the Blue-Eyed Stranger at the Beach" included in Prize Stories 1979: The O. Henry Awards
• "Between the Lines" included in Prize Stories 1981: The O. Henry Awards
• Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, The North Carolina Literary & Historical Association, 1983, for Oral History
• North Carolina Award in Literature, State of North Carolina, 1984
• Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, The North Carolina Literary & Historical Association, 1989, for Fair and Tender Ladies
• Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction, Fellowship of Southern Writers, 1991
• Academy Award in Literature, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1999

Biographical Information

Lee Smith was born and grew up in Grundy, Va., a small mountain town where her mother taught school and her father ran a dime store. She began writing stories as a child and, together with a friend, wrote and published a neighborhood newspaper. Her last two years of high school were spent at St. Catherine’s School in Richmond, Va. Smith attended Hollins College (now Hollins University) in Roanoke, Va., where she wrote for the student newspaper and literary magazine. She also spent part of a year working for The Richmond News-Leader, for which she received academic credit. Smith graduated with a BA degree in 1967, one of fourteen college seniors that year to win a writing grant from the Book-of-the-Month Club. (Her novel The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed was published in 1968.) In 1967, Smith married poet James A. Seay. The couple moved to Tuscaloosa, Ala., where he taught at the University of Alabama and she worked for The Tuscaloosa News. Smith’s next two novels were published while she was living in Alabama.

Smith and her family moved to Chapel Hill, N.C., in 1974, where she taught high school English for several years. She began teaching creative writing classes at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1977. Smith continued writing as well, and two of her short stories were included in O. Henry Prize Stories collections. In 1981, Smith joined the English faculty at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. She and Seay divorced that year, and Smith moved to Raleigh. Also that year, she published her fourth novel and a collection of short stories. Smith remarried in 1985 to journalist Hal Crowther. She continued to teach and to publish novels and short stories. In 1994, Smith received an award from the Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Foundation to do community work. She went to Knott County, Ky., (home of author James Still) and worked in literacy programs at the Hindeman Settlement School. Smith retired from North Carolina State University in 2000. She lives in Hillsborough, N.C., and has a cabin in Jefferson, N.C.

Interests and Themes

Lee Smith’s novels and short stories feature Southern women protagonists and frequently have rural or small town settings. Fancy Strut is set in Speed, Ala.

For More Information

Please check your local library for these materials. If items are not available locally, your librarian can help you borrow them through the InterLibrary Loan program. Your librarian can also help you find other information about this author.

There may be more information available through the databases in the Alabama Virtual Library. If you are an Alabama citizen, AVL can be used at your public library or school library media center. You can also get a username and password from your librarian to use AVL at home.

Reference Books

• Eckard, Paula Gallant. Maternal Body and Voice in Toni Morrison, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Lee Smith. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002.
• Hill, Dorothy Combs. Lee Smith. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992.
• Parrish, Nancy C. Lee Smith, Annie Dillard, and the Hollins Group: A Genesis of Writers. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998.
• Prajznerova, Katerina. Cultural Intermarriage in Southern Appalachia: Cherokee Elements in Four Selected Novels of Lee Smith. New York: Routledge, 2003.
• Smith, Lee. Conversations with Lee Smith. Ed. Linda Tate. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.
• Smith, Rebecca. Gender Dynamics in the Fiction of Lee Smith: Examining Language and Narrative Strategies. San Francisco: International Scholars Publications, 1997.

Reference Articles

• Loewenstein, Claudia. "Unshackling the Patriarchy: An Interview with Lee Smith". Southwest Review 78.4. (1993): 486-505.
• McCord, Charline R. "Interview with Lee Smith: May 18, 1997". The Mississippi Quarterly 52.1. (1999): 89-119.

Reference Web Sites

• A Diamond from Coal Country: The Career of Lee Smith. 2005. North Carolina State University Libraries. http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/exhibits/smith/index.html.
• "A Reading by Lee Smith". Blackbird: An Online Journal of Literature and the Arts. 2006. Virginia Commonwealth University Department of English and New Virginia Review, Inc. http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v5n2/features/smith_l_12-20-06/index.htm.
• Lee Smith. 2006. http://www.leesmith.com/.
• McDaniel, Janet Walker. "Something to Say: An Interview with Lee Smith". Writers Write: The Internet Writing Journal. 2003. Writers Write, Inc. http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/dec02/leesmith.htm.
• Stephens, Mariflo. "Lee Smith (1944-)". Encyclopedia Virginia. 2009. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Smith_Lee_1944-.
• Swaim, Don. "Audio Interviews with Lee Smith". Wired for Books. 2009. Ohio University. http://www.wiredforbooks.org/leesmith/.

Location of Papers

• North Carolina State University

Photo courtesy of the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts, Auburn University.

Last updated on Oct 16, 2009.