Larry Smith is a native Midwesterner, born and raised in a working-class family in the industrial Ohio River Valley. In 1965 he graduated from Muskingum College in Ohio and at 22 married a hometown girl, Ann Zaben. He worked in the steel mills that summer before moving to Euclid, Ohio where he taught high school and Ann began working as a nurse. He earned degrees at Kent State University (M.A. and Ph.D), and was there when the riots and shootings of students occurred. In 1970-1971 he and Ann and their daughter Laura moved to Huron, Ohio, where he began teaching at Firelands College of Bowling Green State University. Son Brian (1970) and daughter Suzanne (1975) were born in Huron. In 1980 he was a Fulbright lecturer in American Literature in Sicily. He is the author of eight books of poetry, a book of memoirs, six books of fiction, two literary biographies of authors Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Kenneth Patchen, and two books of translations from the Chinese with co-translator Mei Hui Huang. His photo history of his hometown Mingo Junction appeared recently in the Images of America Series. Two of his film scripts on authors James Wright and Kenneth Patchen have been made into films with Tom Koba and shown on PBS.
�The Company of Widows,� [included in The Thick of Thin] �home� to
his mother. It is homage to his parents, to the legacy of work �as
fabric of life,� and to working-class struggle that �toughens you
or it breaks your heart.�� �Janet Zandy �Such a sweet, kind,
modest, touching, an unassuming book�It is this simple pride in
being �common� that most touches me�.I envy Smith this rooted,
honest, and unabashedly loving portrait of his native land.� �David
Budbill �This beautiful memoir of that part of the steel-hearted
Midwest, by a writer who understands the poetry and poverty of the
working-class poor, is something to be put in the hands of anyone
unfamiliar with the history of steel towns, America�s blue collar
culture, and how it shaped lives and souls.� �Norbert Blei
First Review of The Thick of Thin: Memoirs " A native of the
industrial Ohio River valley, Smith grew up in a mill town where
classmates were children of steel workers � mostly of immigrant and
black families. Smith�s father shared the goal of many in the
valley to send their children to college and escape the mills to
more fully serve the community. Thus, was birthed the new
working-class of which Smith proudly writes. ...The author has
turned out a well-written memoir that resonates with those who
reached adulthood in the 1960s and 70s and became the working
class. This book warms the reader like a quilt of memory scraps,
recorded in words rather than stitches." RECOMMENDED by the US
REVIEW OF BOOKS (April 2017)
Larry Smith�s strikingly lucid and complete memoir has a deep and
strong focus upon bringing forward the experience of Midwest Ohioan
milltown working-class life. The range and volume of Smith�s work,
from poetry to fiction to memoir�and including his tremendous
contributions through his Bottom Dog Press�is simply stunning. His
writing moves with great energy, directness, honesty, clarity, and
empathy�which, for Smith, �opens creativity.� This empathy touches
upon family, townspeople and others, but also upon nature, in the
sense of experiencing the oneness of self and place. This
�meditation� aspect of his writing, as a heightened awareness of
the present moment, is simply inspiring: it is a gift to the
reader. As he reflects, � . . . the writing of my life has always
been a reaching to others.� --Ingrid Swanberg, Editor of Abraxas
and Director of Ghost Pony Press
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