Jane Smiley was born in Los Angeles and grew up in St Louis, Missouri. In 1992 she won the Pulitzer Prize for A Thousand Acres, for which she also won the National Book Critics’ Circle Award. Her other novels include Moo (1995), Horse Heaven (2000), which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, Good Faith (2003) and Ten Days in the Hills (2007). Her most recent novel is Private Life (2010). In 2006 Jane Smiley was awarded the PEN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature.