Storyweb: Storytime For Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Lee Smith’s memoir, Dimestore: A Writer’s Life. I first fell in love with Lee Smith’s fiction nearly thirty years ago when I was a cook at Le Conte Lodge in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. On my afternoons off, I’d sit on my cabin porch, reading first Lee’s novel Oral History, later her novel Fair and Tender Ladies. She created characters with such powerful voices – women and men of Appalachia who spin yarns through story and song. Granny Younger’s voice and Ivy Rowe’s letters have stayed with me all these years. The more I followed Lee’s career, the more I was drawn in. So it was an honor years later to edit a collection of previously published interviews with her. Gathering these interviews in Conversations with Lee Smith was like sitting on the porch drinking sweet tea and hanging out with a long-lost but beloved cousin. Last year when Lee published her newest book, Dimestore: A Writer’s Life, I was more than delighted. In the interviews I had collected, Lee had told bits an