{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"159: Lee Smith: "Dimestore"","description":"This week on StoryWeb: Lee Smith\u2019s memoir, Dimestore: A Writer\u2019s Life. I first fell in love with Lee Smith\u2019s fiction nearly thirty years ago when I was a cook at Le Conte Lodge in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. On my afternoons off, I\u2019d sit on my cabin porch, reading first Lee\u2019s novel Oral History, later her novel Fair and Tender Ladies. She created characters with such powerful voices \u2013 women and men of Appalachia who spin yarns through story and song. Granny Younger\u2019s voice and Ivy Rowe\u2019s letters have stayed with me all these years. The more I followed Lee\u2019s career, the more I was drawn in. So it was an honor years later to edit a collection of previously published interviews with her. Gathering these interviews in Conversations with Lee Smith was like sitting on the porch drinking sweet tea and hanging out with a long-lost but beloved cousin. Last year when Lee published her newest book, Dimestore: A Writer\u2019s Life, I was more than delighted. In the interviews I had collected, Lee had told bits and pieces of her story \u2013 but now came Dimestore, a collection of personal essays, roughly arranged in chronological order. Taken together, they read like a memoir. The reader who picks up Dimestore will learn about growing up as an only child in Grundy, Virginia, her parents, Gig and Ernest, her time spent in her father\u2019s Ben Franklin dimestore, her parents\u2019 struggles with mental illness, and Lee\u2019s resilient coping strategies. As the book goes on, the reader learns also about her son Josh and his diagnosis of schizophrenia at age eighteen. Along the way, the reader sees how Lee\u2019s love of storytelling and passion for writing literally saved her life.     One essay in the book stands out for me above all the others. \u201cA Life in Books\u201d began as the keynote address at the 2007 meeting of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP). I was fortunate enough to meet my best friends, Amy Young and Jennifer Soule, in Atlanta for the conference. And of course, they were right there with me in the front row for Lee\u2019s speech. By this time, Lee and I had long since met and become friends, and we had talked about the mental illness that ran through both of our families over many generations. And I knew that her son Josh had recently died of complications of his schizophrenia. I had sent a card and made a donation to the group home where he lived. But little did I expect that Lee would talk openly that night about the heartbreaking loss of Josh and about the role her writing played in helping her to recover her own life. I wasn\u2019t the only one who was deeply moved by Lee\u2019s honest account that evening. Indeed, there were no dry eyes in the auditorium as the audience leapt to its feet in a long-standing ovation. I\u2019m so glad to see Dimestore published. In addition to \u201cA Life in Books,\u201d which appears near the end of the book, I highly recommend the entire volume. The author of thirteen novels and four short story collections, Lee Smith leaves her fictional worlds behind and lets us see behind the curtains into her own life. To learn more about Dimestore, read the Huffington Post\u2019s interview with Lee Smith and Publisher\u2019s Weekly interview with her, then listen to Diane Rehm\u2019s interview with her as well as Frank Stasio\u2019s North Carolina Public Radio conversation with her about the book. You\u2019ll also delight in visiting Lee\u2019s website. You can read excerpts from the book: \u201cRaised to Leave: Some Thoughts on \u2018Culture\u2019\u201d and \u201cFinding My Way Home.\u201d When you\u2019re hooked (and I know you will be!), get your hands on a hard copy of Dimestore. Visit thestoryweb.com\/dimestore for links to all these resources and to listen to Lee Smith give her 2007 speech titled \u201cA Life in Books,\u201d published as an essay near the end of Dimestore. ","author_name":"StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups","author_url":"http:\/\/storyweb.libsyn.com\/webpage","html":"