Much of Lee Smith's fiction entails experiments in narrative voice and structure. Her protagonists often suffer some traumatic and dramatic past event with which they must wrestle in order for them to understand their present and prepare themselves for their future. Smith's storytelling involves a pronounced affection for her characters and the challenges they face, a strong sense of place (particularly in those works set in and around Smith's Appalachian home ground of Buchanan County, Virginia), and a concern with the roles women serve and make for themselves if they are to survive in this world. In her best works she also incorporates the folklore and storytelling of the southwestern Virginia natives, having carefully researched her postage stamp of soil.

Smith was born on 1 November 1944 to Ernest Lee Smith and Virginia Elizabeth Marshall Smith in the small mining town of Grundy, Virginia, where her father ran the dime...