About the Book
A compassionate memoir by a writer, professor, and family man from the industrial Midwest. Smith treat class, education, family, place, and the life of the spirit in this stirring book.
About the Author :
Larry Smith is a native Midwesterner, born and raised in a working-class family in the industrial Ohio River Valley. In 1965 he graduated from Muskingum College in Ohio and at 22 married a hometown girl, Ann Zaben. He worked in the steel mills that summer before moving to Euclid, Ohio where he taught high school and Ann began working as a nurse. He earned degrees at Kent State University (M.A. and Ph.D), and was there when the riots and shootings of students occurred. In 1970-1971 he and Ann and their daughter Laura moved to Huron, Ohio, where he began teaching at Firelands College of Bowling Green State University. Son Brian (1970) and daughter Suzanne (1975) were born in Huron. In 1980 he was a Fulbright lecturer in American Literature in Sicily. He is the author of eight books of poetry, a book of memoirs, six books of fiction, two literary biographies of authors Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Kenneth Patchen, and two books of translations from the Chinese with co-translator Mei Hui Huang. His photo history of his hometown Mingo Junction appeared recently in the Images of America Series. Two of his film scripts on authors James Wright and Kenneth Patchen have been made into films with Tom Koba and shown on PBS.
As a professor of English and humanities at Firelands College (1970-2010) he has taught writing and literature and served as director of the Firelands Writing Center, a cooperative of writers. As director of the literary publisher, Bottom Dog Press, Inc., he has edited over 65 books and carried into publication some 200 titles of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. In addition, Smith has been a reviewer for American Book Review, Parabola, Small Press Review, Choice, The San Francisco Review of Books, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohioana Quarterly, Heartlands, and the New York Journal of Books. He is a requested presenter at various writers� conferences in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. His poetry has been featured on American Public Media�s Writer�s Almanac with Garrison Keillor. His recent publications include the novel The Free Farm (2013), Each Moment All: Meditations as Poems (2012) and Lake Winds: Poems (2014). He enjoys playing guitar and doing meditation at the Converging Paths Meditation Center in Sandusky, Ohio.
Review :
First Review of The Thick of Thin: Memoirs " A native of the industrial Ohio River valley, Smith grew up in a mill town where classmates were children of steel workers � mostly of immigrant and black families. Smith�s father shared the goal of many in the valley to send their children to college and escape the mills to more fully serve the community. Thus, was birthed the new working-class of which Smith proudly writes.
...The author has turned out a well-written memoir that resonates with those who reached adulthood in the 1960s and 70s and became the working class. This book warms the reader like a quilt of memory scraps, recorded in words rather than stitches."
�The Company of Widows,� [included in Milldust and Roses] one of the strongest pieces, describes a visit �home� to his mother. It is homage to his parents, to the legacy of work �as fabric of life,� and to working-class struggle that �toughens you or it breaks your heart.�� �Janet Zandy �Such a sweet, kind, modest, touching, an unassuming book�It is this simple pride in being �common� that most touches me�.I envy Smith this rooted, honest, and unabashedly loving portrait of his native land.� �David Budbill
�This beautiful memoir of that part of the steel-hearted Midwest, by a writer who understands the poetry and poverty of the working-class poor, is something to be put in the hands of anyone unfamiliar with the history of steel towns, America�s blue collar culture, and how it shaped lives and souls.� �Norbert Blei
Larry Smith�s strikingly lucid and complete memoir has a deep and strong focus upon bringing forward the experience of Midwest Ohioan milltown working-class life. The range and volume of Smith�s work, from poetry to fiction to memoir�and including his tremendous contributions through his Bottom Dog Press�is simply stunning. His writing moves with great energy, directness, honesty, clarity, and empathy�which, for Smith, �opens creativity.� This empathy touches upon family, townspeople and others, but also upon nature, in the sense of experiencing the oneness of self and place. This �meditation� aspect of his writing, as a heightened awareness of the present moment, is simply inspiring: it is a gift to the reader. As he reflects, � . . . the writing of my life has always been a reaching to others.� --Ingrid Swanberg, Editor of Abraxas and Director of Ghost Pony Press
This is a remarkable memoir, two memoirs really. One chronicles Larry Smith�s odyssey from son of a mill town worker to accomplished teacher, writer, publisher. We see a young man take his first uncertain steps from a way of life that had defined his family for generations. As he and wife Ann move from their beloved Ohio Valley, we also see the values of hard work, honesty to self, acceptance of others, and others instilled from his parents impelling his life forward from college graduate to high school teacher to college professor. Throughout, love of family remains at the center of his life. The other memoir is his creative odyssey. Shared the evolution of his creative self as reflected in selections from his poetry, fiction, and biography. It brings him�and us�to a precipice of understanding that is deep and profound, a holistic self grounded in the world of nature and others. --Kurt Landefeld, author of Jack's Memoir
