---
name: "Jane Smiley"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/jane-smiley"
roles: ["Writer"]
born: "26 September 1949"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
updated: "2026-09-16T21:21:07.177247+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Jane Smiley

Writer. Born 26 September 1949 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

## Details

- **Work:** Writer
- **Born:** 26 September 1949, Los Angeles, California, USA

## Biography

Jane Smiley is an American novelist and writer. She was born on 26 September 1949 in Los Angeles, California. She studied literature at Vassar College, where she received a BA in 1971, and at the University of Iowa, where she earned an MA in 1975, an MFA in 1976 and a PhD in 1978.

Smiley taught English at Iowa State University from 1981 to 1996. Her novels include *A Thousand Acres* (1991), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 and was adapted into a film in 1997, and *The Greenlanders* (1988). She wrote a teleplay for an episode of the series *Homicide: Life on the Street* in 1995. Her novella *The Age of Grief* was adapted into the film *The Secret Lives of Dentists* (2002). In 2001 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

*Sources: imdb.com, en.wikipedia.org, britannica.com.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *Homicide: Life on the Street* (1993), Fi1m 89, Writer — [page](https://film.one/tv/homicide-life-on-the-street.md)

## Also known for

- *A Thousand Acres* (1997), Novel

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/jane-smiley