Lee Smith





Lee Smith

Author profile


born
November 01, 1944 in Grundy, Virginia, The United States

gender
female

website

genre

influences
William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Virginia Woolf


About this author

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." Since 1968, she has published eleven novels, as well as three collections of short stories, and has received many writing awards.

The sense of place infusing her novels reveals her insight into and empathy for the people and culture of Appalachia. Lee Smith was born in 1944 in Grundy, Virginia, a small coal-mining town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, not 10 miles from the Kentucky border. The Smith home sat on Main Street, and the Levisa River ran just behind it. Her mother, Virginia, was a college graduate wh...more


Average rating: 3.72 · 10,633 ratings · 1,268 reviews · 52 distinct works
Fair and Tender Ladies
4.13 of 5 stars 4.13 avg rating — 1,944 ratings — published 1988 — 12 editions
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The Last Girls
3.17 of 5 stars 3.17 avg rating — 2,240 ratings — published 2002 — 10 editions
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On Agate Hill
3.68 of 5 stars 3.68 avg rating — 1,400 ratings — published 2006 — 13 editions
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Oral History
4.01 of 5 stars 4.01 avg rating — 1,125 ratings — published 1989 — 8 editions
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Saving Grace
3.78 of 5 stars 3.78 avg rating — 766 ratings — published 1995 — 2 editions
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Family Linen
3.71 of 5 stars 3.71 avg rating — 621 ratings — published 1985 — 6 editions
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Black Mountain Breakdown
3.86 of 5 stars 3.86 avg rating — 406 ratings — published 1980 — 7 editions
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The Devil's Dream
3.93 of 5 stars 3.93 avg rating — 391 ratings — published 1992 — 6 editions
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Cakewalk
3.8 of 5 stars 3.80 avg rating — 259 ratings — published 1981 — 5 editions
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Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eye...
3.52 of 5 stars 3.52 avg rating — 284 ratings — published 2010 — 6 editions
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“What I didn't understand, all those years when I was waiting for my life to start, was that it had already started. I was already living it! Those were the most important years, and I didn't even know it.”
Lee Smith

“The state of my nerves precludes any more active an existence”
Lee Smith, Family Linen

“And I belive I am too, and if you think that is awful, then you dont understand a thing.”
Lee Smith

Polls

GROUP READ B ~ Any Book in the March/April 2012 Issue - Which of the nominated books would you like as one of our April/May group reads?

 
  5 votes, 50.0%

 
  2 votes, 20.0%

 
  2 votes, 20.0%

 
  1 vote, 10.0%

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