Janice lee smith author dimestore

In Dimestore: A Writer's Life, Lee Smith reflects back on her growing up as a daughter of the Appalachian South and as a fiction writer. While she reports that her fiction finally clicked when she wrote about the life she knew growing up, her non-fiction clearly benefits from the same gaze.

You took some moments from your life and used them to spark fiction.

What sets apart fiction from non-fiction to you?

Lee Smith: First let me say that I have been writing fiction all my life and publishing it for 47 years. I've never made a real living, but writing has given me a real good life.

So why did I decide to turn to memoir now, after all these years? Quite simply, I got a kick start when my Appalachian hometown was demolished by a flood control project. I was present to witness the destruction of my father's Dimestore, which he owned and ran for 55