A 1971 graduate of Vassar College, Smiley earned her MFA and PhD at the University of Iowa. She taught at Iowa State University in Ames from 1981 to 1996 and is the author of ten works of fiction, including The Age of Grief, The Greenlanders, and the two
novellas Ordinary Love and Good Will. Her novel, A Thousand Acres, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. She has written on politics, travel, farming, horse training, child-rearing, literature, impulse buying, getting dressed, marriage, and many other topics. In 2001 she was inducted into the Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Northern California.