Matt Raymond from the Library of Congress speaks with Jane Smiley, who appeared at the 2010 National Book Festival on September 25, 2010, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Biography

Jane Smiley is the author of several critically acclaimed and popular novels, including “The Age of God,” “The Greenlanders,” “Ordinary Love and Good Will,” “A Thousand Acres” (winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award), “Horse Heaven,” “Good Faith” and the new young-adult novel “The Georges and the Jewels” (Knopf). She has also written for The New Yorker, Horseman, Harper’s, The Nation and others. In 2001 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 2006 received the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She was a fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts in 1978 and 1987. Smiley’s new novel for adults is “Private Life” (Knopf). She lives in California.