SOURCE: "Alice McDermott," in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 239, No. 16, March 30, 1992, pp. 85-6.

An American editor, Smith is the author of the 1990 Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931–1940. In the following essay, based in part on conversations with McDermott, she provides an overview of McDermott's career as well as her insights into the writing process.

In 1979 a nervous graduate of the University of New Hampshire's writing program handed literary agent Harriet Wasserman's secretary a few short stories and 50 pages of an unfinished novel. Wasserman read them, called the writer and said, "I want you to give me everything you've got." Not too long after that, she invited Alice McDermott to her office and asked, "Would you like a male editor or a female one?"

The astonished 26-year-old, who would have been happy with "any living, breathing literary editor," wound up under the wing of Jonathan Galassi, then a...