My first book, a collection of short stories, has a title and a cover! My book will be published by Cornerstone Press at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in February 23, 2027.

Smith’s writing style is like a delicious apple – crisp, and both tart and sweet. Smith evokes the warmth and beauty of a rural Wisconsin upbringing, yet pulls no punches about the darker side of alcoholism, infidelity, domestic abuse, and broken dreams. — Julie A. Jacob, author Bicentennial Eve: A Wisconsin Novella and Two States of Single: Essays on Family, Love, and Living Solo.

It isn’t so easy to make heroes of the unnoticed, the poor, the beautifully innocent, the God fearing. Smith does this in her short stories. She is a master of the flash fiction and her longer fictions are no less engaging. I will cherish this debut collection not only for its artistry—for its misfit protagonists in old clothes—but also for the great wisdom and morality at its center. — Anthony Bukoski, author of The Blondes of Wisconsin and The Thief of Words

With shades of Joyce Carol Oates and Elizabeth Strout, Smith has a knack for capturing the voices of her characters: children striving for better in a world where flawed adults have let them down, women bent but not broken by the circumstances that contrive against them, adolescents on the threshold of their becoming. With subtle commentary on class, patriarchy, and power—always insightful, never preachy—the stories in Silent Negotiations are a triumph. — Kim Suhr, author of Close Call and Nothing to Lose and Director of Red Oak Writing

Smith has written an intimate, nostalgic, debut collection that is such a portrait of both the pain and simple pleasures of growing up with humble means and Midwestern bones. As you experience her characters navigating fraught seasons of life, the writing takes a bite out of your heart, then soothes you with moments of joy. —Toya Wolfe, award winning author of Last Summer on State Street

Silent Negotiations grabs a reader’s attention from beginning to end. Lyrical language and brilliantly developed characters bring twentieth-century Wisconsin to life. A small girl compares the movement of her physics-defying swinging to her grandma’s metronome. A lonely sister views a mirage on a country road and says, “I learned a long time ago I could see something in the distance that would never come to be.” A mother admonishes her girls, “We’re lace-curtain Irish, not shanty Irish.” Smith’s stories fearlessly examine rural life, poverty, religion, and social expectations. — Candace Simar, award-winning Author of Sister Lumberjack

Lives of the working-class Midwest are portrayed by Smith in stories that profoundly and skillfully interweave descriptions of humble surroundings, observant and deeply thoughtful characters, and a gritty lifeforce that is at the heart of often overlooked beauties and complex gifts of flyover country. The characters will long remain with me. — Linda LeGarde Grover, author of Dance Boots and In the Night of Memory