Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley (born September 26, 1949) 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 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 "". 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" [http://www.mommywars.net] by "Washington Post" writer Leslie Morgan Steiner [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.

Quotations

In an article for "Slate" shortly after Election Day 2004, she wrote::"The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry...I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 millions have not...Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states...The error that progressives have consistently committed over the years is to underestimate the vitality of ignorance in America...The history of the last four years shows that red state types, above all, do not want to be told what to do - they prefer to be ignorant. As a result, they are virtually unteachable...Listen to what the red state citizens say about themselves, the songs they write, and the sermons they flock to. They know who they are - they are full of original sin and they have a taste for violence."

In response to the Bush Administration, she wrote: :"In a just world, these people would be taken out and shot." - [http://dir.salon.com/story/books/letters/2005/10/11/packer/index.html Salon Article]

At a book reading, Barnes and Noble, San Jose, California, 4/16/1996:"Women in their late 20s, prior to the birth of the first child, are all certain not to make the mistakes other women have made to render them powerless, attending to others' needs." :"A real moment of real women talking" - Regarding King Lear's daughters Goneril and Regan talking about their father.:"One day you sit down and start writing" - Answering 'how does one become a writer?'.:"Two hours is two pages per day."

" [Writing] looks vast & complicated until you've been doing it a while" – 1997.

"When I read Lawrence O'Donnell's post calling John Edwards a 'loser' and threatening a lifetime of infamy if he doesn't get out of the race, I immediately went to O'Donnell's bio to see his party affiliation. I was sure it would say 'R' -- but it didn't. It didn't say anything. However, I am fairly sure in my own mind that Karl Rove paid him to write that post." - [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/shut-up-larry_b_81091.html "Huffington Post," 1/11/2008] .

Works

Novels

*"Barn Blind" (1980)
*"At Paradise Gate" (1981)
*"Duplicate Keys" (1984)
*"The Greenlanders" (1988)
*"Ordinary Love & Good Will" (1989)
*"A Thousand Acres" (1991)
*"Moo" (1995)
*"The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton" (1998)
*"Horse Heaven" (2000)
*"Good Faith" (2003)
*"Ten Days in the Hills" (2007)

tory collections

*"The Age of Grief" (1987)

Nonfiction

*"Charles Dickens" (2003)
*"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.

Television

*"In Search of Crimes Past", episode of "" (teleplay; story by Henry Bromell & Julie Martin) (1995)

References

External links

* [http://slate.com/id/2109218/ 2004 Slate article: "The unteachable ignorance of the red states"]
* [http://www.identitytheory.com/interviews/birnbaum111.html 2003 interview of Jane Smiley, IdentityTheory]
*
* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0604384/fullcredits#writers In Search of Crimes Past] for "Homicide: Life on the Street" at Internet Movie Database