thumb|Jane Smiley at the 2009 Texas Book Festival.Jane Smiley (born
September 26,
1949) is a
Pulitzer Prize-winning
American novelist.
Career
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 an
A.B. at
Vassar College, then earned an
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.
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. It was adapted into a
film of the same title in 1997. In 1995 she wrote her sole television script, produced for an episode of
Homicide: Life on the Street. Her novella
The Age of Grief was made into the
2002 film
The Secret Lives of Dentists. Her essay "Feminism Meets the Free Market" was included in the 2006 anthology
Mommy Wars by
Washington Post writer
Leslie Morgan Steiner.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (
2005), is a non-fiction meditation on the history and the nature of the novel, somewhat in the tradition of
E. M. Forster's seminal
Aspects of the Novel, that roams from eleventh century Japan's
Murasaki Shikibu's
The Tale of Genji to twenty-first century Americans' chick lit.
From 1981 to 1996, she taught undergrad and graduate creative writing workshops at
Iowa State University. She continued teaching at ISU even after moving her primary residence to California.
In 2001, Smiley was elected a member of
The American Academy of Arts and Letters. She participates in the annual
Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in association with
UCLA. Smiley chaired the judges' panel for the prestigious Man Booker International Prize in 2009.
Works
Novels- Ordinary Love & Good Will (1989)
- The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton (1998)
- Ten Days in the Hills (2007)
- The Georges and the Jewels (2009)
Story collectionsNon-fiction- A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money, and Luck (2004)
- Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (2005)
Articles- "Say It Ain't So, Huck: Second Thoughts on Mark Twain's 'Masterpiece'" Harper's Magazine 292.1748 (Jan. 1996): 61-67. (1995)
- "And Moo to You Too" Civilization 2.6 (1995): 75.
Essays- "Iowa Was Never Like This," from The Other Woman: Twenty-one Wives, Lovers, and Others Talk Openly About Sex, Deception, Love, and Betrayal
Television
