Description
Lee Smith, a Virginia-born and educated author, is a master of southern regional writing known for her ability to capture the voices of a wide variety of fictional characters. Her best-selling books have turned a national spotlight on her native southwestern Virginia, where most of her stories and twelve novels are set. She has won numerous major writing awards, including two O. Henry Awards (1979 and 1981) for her three collections of stories, the John Dos Passos Award for Literature (1987), the Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction (1991), and the Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Writers Award (1995). Two of her novels have been adapted for the stage, one in Virginia and one in New York. Characters from another form the basis for a traveling musical show. Smith retired after eighteen years of teaching at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
