Smith, Lee, 1944-....

A popular author of novels and short stories, Lee Smith earned a B.A. in English from Hollins College in 1967. Immediately after college she worked as a reporter for the Richmond News Leader and the Tuscaloosa News. Smith was an English teacher at Harpeth Hall School in Nashville, 1971-1975, and at the Carolina Friends School in North Carolina, 1975-1977. She taught creative writing at Duke University in 1977 and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1978-1981. From 1979 to 1980 she was the director of a summer writing workshop for the University of Virginia. In 1981, she came to North Carolina State University, where she taught for 19 years.

From the description of Lee Marshall Smith Papers, 1956-2006 [manuscript] (North Carolina State University). WorldCat record id: 493291427

Lee Marshall Smith was born in Grundy, Virginia. As a college student, she studied in France during her junior year and interned at the Richmond News Leader with chief editorial writer James J. Kilpatrick. Ms. Smith was awarded a Book-of-the Month Club Writing Fellowship in June 1967, immediately following her graduation from Hollins College with a B.A. in English. She continued her writing career as a reporter for the Tuscaloosa News in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1968-1969 and then became the feature writer, film critic, and editor of the newspaper's Sunday magazine. She switched from journalism to teaching English at Harpeth Hall School in Nashville, Tennessee, 1971-1974, and the Carolina Friends School in Durham, North Carolina, 1975-1977. During this period Ms. Smith was married and raised two boys.

Lee Smith pursued her writing career and was selected as the writer-in-residence at Hollins College during the spring semester of 1976. She continued to teach creative writing as an instructor at Duke University in 1977, a lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1978-1981, and the director of a summer writing workshop for the University of Virginia, 1979-1980. In 1981 she took a position at North Carolina State University, where she taught for 19 years. Ms. Smith has given numerous lectures in addition to her extended visits to various schools and conferences teaching writing and conducting workshops. She has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards including two O. Henry Awards, the John Dos Passos Award, the Robert Penn Warren Fiction Prize, and the North Carolina Award for Fiction in 1984. As of 1997, she had published 15 books:

The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed, 1968

Something in the Wind, 1971

Fancy Strut, 1973

Black Mountain Breakdown, 1981

Cakewalk, 1981

Oral History, 1983

Family Linen, 1985

Fair and Tender Ladies, 1988

Bob, A Dog, 1988

Me and My Baby View the Eclipse, 1990

The Devil's Dream, 1992

We Don't Love with Our Teeth, 1994

Saving Grace, 1995

The Christmas Letters: A Novella, 1996

News of the Spirit, 1997

In 2002, Smith published The Last Girls, which was inspired by an actual raft trip she made down the Mississippi River with other Hollins girls in 1966. On Agate Hill, an historical novel set in piedmont North Carolina during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, was published in 2006.

From the guide to the Lee Marshall Smith Papers, 1956-2006, (Special Collections Research Center)