Township

Supple, deeply rooted in place, and astonishing in their bite and wit, the stories in Township reveal Jamie Lyn Smith's mastery of the form. The scenes and characters are searingly local, yet burst with significance onto the national literary scene, reminding us of Flannery O'Connor, Jayne Anne Phillips, and Lorrie Moore, but with an incisive presence all Smith's own. They are a cause for joy.

-David Lynn, Editor Emeritus of The Kenyon Review

Jamie Lyn Smith's voice rings with the authenticity of hard-won wisdom. The stories in her debut collection, Township, open the hearts of the broken and put-upon and finds the underside of the overlooked, the ignored, the tossed-away, the miscreant, the wild, the wandering. Despite their missteps and follies, her characters hold faith in second-chances, grace, redemption. They long to be loved and to love in return. I admire the clear-eyed portrayals of lives lived on the edge-lives that are sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, sometimes a bit of both, but always glorious in the very human tale they have to tell.

-Lee Martin, Pulitzer Prize Finalist author of The Bright Forever

Compulsively readable, gorgeously rendered, Jamie Lyn Smith's stories shine with the broken-hearted, the wise, the rural, and the real. Quick as the river that runs through town, salty and deep as a far-off sea, with a voice that both takes you back and keeps you close, I saw family in the stories of Township. I saw home, and I couldn't look away.

-Alison Stine, author of Road Out of Winter