About the Author

Lee Smith is the author of thirteen books of fiction, including The Last Girls and Fair and Tender Ladies. She has received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award, the Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction, and two O. Henry Awards, among other honors. A native of the Appalachian coal town Grundy, Virginia, she now lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, with her husband, journalist Hal Crowther.