How does a girl from Grundy, Virginia, become a successful writer? The interviews and profiles in Conversations with Lee Smith tell the story of one woman's discovery of her coal-mining hometown as a potential -literary place.-

In this first book of interviews with Smith, she revels in character and sense of place as cornerstones to her art. -What interests me most in writing are the characters, - she says. -I have a lot of trouble thinking of plots, but I love to create the people. I think a person that you create is coming out of some aspect of yourself.-

Smith's career...

Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative traces Linda Tate's journey to rediscover the Cherokee-Appalachian branch of her family and provides an unflinching examination of the poverty, discrimination, and family violence that marked their lives. In her search for the truth of her own past, Tate scoured archives, libraries, and courthouses throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Illinois, and Missouri, visited numerous cemeteries, and combed through census records, marriage records, court cases, local histories, old maps, and photographs. As she began to locate...

Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative traces Linda Tate's journey to rediscover the Cherokee-Appalachian branch of her family and provides an unflinching examination of the poverty, discrimination, and family violence that marked their lives. In her search for the truth of her own past, Tate scoured archives, libraries, and courthouses throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Illinois, and Missouri, visited numerous cemeteries, and combed through census records, marriage records, court cases, local histories, old maps, and photographs. As she began to locate...

How does a girl from Grundy, Virginia, become a successful writer? The interviews and profiles in Conversations with Lee Smith tell the story of one woman's discovery of her coal-mining hometown as a potential -literary place.-

In this first book of interviews with Smith, she revels in character and sense of place as cornerstones to her art. -What interests me most in writing are the characters, - she says. -I have a lot of trouble thinking of plots, but I love to create the people. I think a person that you create is coming out of some aspect of yourself.-

Smith's career spans...