Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley is an acclaimed American novelist born in Los Angeles and raised in Missouri.
She earned degrees from Vassar College and the University of Iowa, also studying in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar.
She taught at Iowa State University from 1981 to 1996.
Smiley began publishing fiction in 1980 and won a 1985 O. Henry Award for her short story "Lily." Her landmark novel A Thousand Acres, a retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear, earned the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 and was later adapted into a film.
In 2001, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
