Jane Smiley discusses The Questions That Matter Most on the Thacker Mountain Radio Hour at the Powerhouse in Oxford, MS. Co-hosted by Square Books. Appearing with Smiley is Ethel Morgan Smith, author of Path to Grace.

413 S. 14th St., Oxford, MS 38655

Jane Smiley is a novelist and essayist. Her novel A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992, and her novel The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton won the 1999 Spur Award for Best Novel of the West. She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1987. Her novel Horse Heaven was short-listed for the Orange Prize in 2002, and her novel Some Luck was long-listed for the 2014 National Book Award. She has written for numerous magazines and newspapers, including the New Yorker, the New York Times, Harper’s, and The Nation. Her most recent novel, A Dangerous Business, was published in 2022. She lives in Carmel Valley, California.

Ethel Morgan Smith is author of From Whence Cometh My Help: The African American Community at Hollins College and Reflections of the Other: Being Black in Germany. Her essay “Love Means Nothing” won the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Prize. “We Ready” was a finalist for the Jeanne M. Lieby Prize and was published in the Florida Review. She has also published in the New York Times, Callaloo, and African American Review. Smith has been a Fulbright Scholar (Universität of Tübingen, Germany); Rockefeller Fellow (Bellagio, Italy); Visiting Artist (American Academy in Rome); and DuPont Fellow (Randolph Macon Women’s College).