Jane Smiley Books in Order

Jane Smiley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist. A native Californian, she grew up in the St. Louis suburb of Webster Groves, Missouri, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She holds a degree from Vassar College and a M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, where she also studied in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar. Smiley taught at Iowa State University from 1981 to 1996. Her writing career began with the publication of her first novel, <i>Barn Blind</i>, in 1980, followed by the 1985 O. Henry Award for her short story "Lily" in <i>The Atlantic Monthly</i>. Her best-selling novel, <i>A Thousand Acres</i>, a retelling of William Shakespeare's <i>King Lear</i>, earned the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. The novel was later adapted into a 1997 film of the same title. Smiley has also ventured into screenwriting, writing a 1995 episode of <i>Homicide: Life on the Street</i>. Her novella, <i>The Age of Grief</i>, was adapted into the 2002 film <i>The Secret Lives of Dentists</i>. In 2005, she published <i>Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel</i>, a non-fiction exploration of the novel's history and nature. Elected to The