Dimestore (16 page)

LEE SMITH began writing stories at the age of nine and selling them for a nickel apiece. Since then, she has written seventeen works of fiction, including
Fair and Tender Ladies, Oral History,
and most recently,
Guests on Earth.
She has received numerous awards, including the North Carolina Award for Literature and an Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; her novel
The Last Girls
was a
New York Times
bestseller as well as winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, with her husband, the writer Hal Crowther. (Author photo by Diana Matthews.)

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Published by

ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

Post Office Box 2225

Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of

WORKMAN PUBLISHING

225 Varick Street

New York, New York 10014

© 2016 by Lee Smith.

All rights reserved.

Design by Steve Godwin.

“Dimestore” contains material by Lee Smith from two articles from the
Washington Post
and the introduction to
Sitting on the Courthouse Bench: An Oral History of Grudy, Virginia,
edited by Lee Smith, 2000, Tryon Publishing Co., Chapel Hill, N.C.

“Recipe Box,” originally published in
House and Garden,
2002.

“Lady Lessons” in
Garden and Gun,
2010.

A version of “Marble Cake,” in
Eudora Welty: Writers' Reflections upon First Reading Welty
, edited by Pearl McHaney, originally published by Hill Street Press, 1999.

“Raised to Leave,” in the
Washington Post Sunday Magazine
, 2001.

“Lightning Storm,” originally published by the 
New York Times
as “Given Tools, They Work the Language,” 1996.

“Driving Miss Daisy Crazy,” originally a talk, then published as the introduction to
New Stories from the South
, 2001.

“Good-bye to the Sunset Man,” originally published in the
Independent Weekly,
October 2004. 

“A Life in Books,” based on an Associated Writing Program keynote address (and then printed in the AWP magazine/newsletter) and a piece named “Everything Else Falls Away”
 
written for the collection
Why I Write:
Th
oughts on the Craft of Fiction,
 edited by Will Blythe
, Little, Brown, 1998.  

“Angels Passing,” originally published in the
Independent Weekly
.

“The Little Locksmith,” in the
Raleigh News and Observer,
2002.

“Heritage,” in
From the Mountain, From the Valley: New and Collected Poems
by James Still, edited by Ted Olson, published by the University Press of Kentucky, March 2005.

Excerpts from
Th
e Wolfpen Notebooks: A Record of Appalachian Life
by James Still, published by the University Press of Kentucky, July 9, 1991.

“Salvation,” in
Th
e River Hills and Beyond
by Lou Crabtree, published by Sow's Ear Press, 1998.

“Song to Oysters,” in
Soupsongs/Webster's Ark
by Roy Blount Jr., published by Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

With gratitude to the original publishers of Lee Smith's work quoted herein:
Th
e Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed,
Harper and Row, New York, 1968.
Oral History
(1983) and
Fair and Tender Ladies
(1988), G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. The story “Tongues of Fire,” in
Me and My Baby View the Eclipse
, by Lee Smith, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1990.

eISBN 978-1-61620-596-6