Jane Smiley





Jane Smiley

Author profile


born
September 26, 1949 in Los Angeles, California, The United States

gender
female

website

genre


About this author

Jane Smiley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist.

Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She obtained a A.B. at Vassar College, then earned a M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. While working towards her doctorate, she also spent a year studying in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar. From 1981 to 1996, she taught at Iowa State University. Smiley published her first novel, Barn Blind, in 1980, and won a 1985 O. Henry Award for her short story "Lily", which was published in The Atlantic Monthly. Her best-selling A Thousand Acres, a story based on William Shakespeare's King Lear, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992....more


Jane Smiley isn't a Goodreads Author (yet), but she does have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from her feed.
When I asked my older daughter what she thought of my divorce from her father (she is 32), she said, "Do you really think I wish we had remained in that suffocating little four-person family?" But my daughter is a pro-divorce radical. Even as a teenager, when she dated boys from nuclear families, she was open about how dull their lives were compared to ours--always the same few people sitting a... read more »
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Published on November 12, 2010 06:22 • 355 views
Average rating: 3.54 · 30,437 ratings · 3,314 reviews · 59 distinct works
A Thousand Acres
3.62 of 5 stars 3.62 avg rating — 16,100 ratings — published 1991 — 32 editions
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Moo
3.39 of 5 stars 3.39 avg rating — 3,185 ratings — published 1995 — 18 editions
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Horse Heaven
3.78 of 5 stars 3.78 avg rating — 1,692 ratings — published 1999 — 22 editions
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Private Life
3.14 of 5 stars 3.14 avg rating — 1,150 ratings — published 2010 — 15 editions
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The All-True Travels and Ad...
3.46 of 5 stars 3.46 avg rating — 917 ratings — published 1998 — 21 editions
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The Sagas of Icelanders
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4.29 of 5 stars 4.29 avg rating — 734 ratings — published 1997 — 8 editions
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Good Faith
3.17 of 5 stars 3.17 avg rating — 904 ratings — published 2003 — 18 editions
My rating:
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Ten Days in the Hills
2.45 of 5 stars 2.45 avg rating — 986 ratings14 editions
My rating:
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Duplicate Keys
3.16 of 5 stars 3.16 avg rating — 778 ratings — published 1995 — 14 editions
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The Greenlanders
3.78 of 5 stars 3.78 avg rating — 632 ratings — published 1988 — 16 editions
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More books by Jane Smiley…
The Georges and the Jewels A Good Horse True Blue
Abby Lovitt (3 books)
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3.664021164021164 of 5 stars 3.66 avg rating — 378 ratings

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“Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.”
Jane Smiley, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel

“A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes- and it will come- may overwhelm the system, be it the immune system or the belief system.”
Jane Smiley

“Like most of the educated, I do harbor a fondness for the sins of my ignorant past.”
Jane Smiley

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