Thomas Wolfe prize to go to Southern author Lee Smith

Lee Smith remembers her first visit to UNC’s campus.

After her sophomore year at Hollins University — and following her first read of UNC alumnus Thomas Wolfe’s renowned Look Homeward, Angel— Smith attended summer school in Chapel Hill.

“I was stumbling around campus mumbling: a stone, a leaf, a door,” Smith said, recalling her awed recitation of Wolfe’s famous words.

Today, Smith’s relationship with Wolfe comes full circle as she accepts the 2010 Thomas Wolfe Prize.

Smith was selected for her plentiful contributions to contemporary literature, members of the creative writing program said.

“She is the preeminent Southern writer working today,” said creative writing professor Marianne Gingher, who will introduce Smith at Thursday’s award ceremony. “She is a beloved storyteller, a literary page turner.”

Bestowed by the faculty of the creative writing program of the English and Comparative Literature Department, the Thomas Wolfe Prize was created in 1999.

“The award tries to honor a writer with a large body of work,” Gingher said. “It celebrates a writing life — someone at the zenith of their career.”

The award honors its recipients while recalling the legacy of its namesake, UNC alumnus Thomas Wolfe, said Michael McFee, director of the creative writing program.

“It is a great way to honor and remember, probably, North Carolina’s most famous writer and to recognize his literary descendents — Southern writers,” McFee said.

No need to read between the lines, her deserving of the award is clear, her peers say. A New York Times bestselling author, Smith has written 16 books of fiction and won more than 15 nationally recognized awards and prizes.

She will deliver a customary lecture at Thursday’s ceremony.

Smith will be presented with a medal — engraved with a bust of Wolfe — before lecturing on a theme she says she feels her writing shares with Wolfe’s work.

“What is home and does it ever exist?” Smith said.

Born in the Appalachian Mountains, the celebrated scribbler is known for her character-driven narratives, told with an immediately recognizable Southern voice.

“I’m from the mountains,” Smith said. “I have a thing for Thomas Wolfe.”

While Smith spins distinctive stories, she herself is a distinctive individual, friends say.

“(She is) one of the few writers for whom it can be said that the quality of the work reflects the quality of the life lived,” said creative writing professor Alan Shapiro.

Having written her own first novel at the age of eight, Smith said that she hopes to enthuse an audience likely filled with a young generation of ambitious writers.

But she has also become an inspiration to her peers.

“I have never once talked to Lee Smith without feeling better about myself,” said communications studies professor Paul Ferguson, a friend of Smith’s.

“She is inspiring.”

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