How does a girl from Grundy Virginia become a successful writer? Theinterviews and profiles in <strong>Conversations with Lee Smith</strong> tell the story of o... » 

How does a girl from Grundy Virginia become a successful writer? Theinterviews and profiles in Conversations with Lee Smith tell the story of onewomans discovery of her coalmining hometown as a potential literary place.In this first book of interviews with Smith she revels in character and senseof place as cornerstones to her art. What interests me most in writing are thecharacters she says. I have a lot of trouble thinking of plots but I loveto create the people. I think a person that you create is coming out of someaspect of yourself.Smiths career spans three decades beginning in 1968 with the publication ofThe Last Day the Dog Bushes Bloomed and includes ten novels threecollections of stories one novella and numerous essays nearly all of whichsince 1980 have focused on her native Appalachia.It is through conversation with others that Lee Smith b. 1944 lives andbreathes. Social to the core defined by her love of talk her penchant for astory Smith like her most memorable storytelling characters from GrannyYounger to Ivy Rowe comes alive through her own voice. Reading aconversation with Smith is like sitting on the porch with your first cousinall the old stories tumbling out in a rush.In interviews Smith tells why we hear echoes of the novelists life in CrystalSpangler the main character in Black Mountain Breakdown 1980 who isliterally immobilized by her passivity. While Smiths own story in no wayresembles the particulars of Crystals Smith reveals in these interviews herown struggle with the assigned gender roles of her region.Forthright and direct Smith traces the arc of her career as she talks.Inresearch she conducted for her breakthrough novel Oral History 1983 Smithdiscovered that the power of her voice lay at home. In Fair and Tender Ladies1988 Smith created the remarkable Ivy Rowe at a time when she herselfpersonally needed a strong role model. Smith then «