Welcome to Books by Smithies, a platform for celebrating Smithie Writers and the Smith College literary community. Not affiliated with the college (except in our hearts).
What's this all about?
If you made it this far, I’m guessing you’ve heard of a top-notch educational institution called Smith College. Smith turns out leaders in all fields, and literature is no different. Books by Smithies exists to celebrate Smithie writers of all stripes — romance writers, academic writers, authors of memoir and book-length journalism. Whether you want to support your fellow alumnae or you’re just looking for a new book, your next great read was written by a Smithie!
Book Listings feature only books written by Smithies. Listings are added a few at a time and are by no means complete! Feature articles (including reviews, columns by Smithie authors, and other items of interest to Smithie readers) may contain books by non-Smithie authors.
How do you decide what books to list?
Happenstance, to be honest. Although we would love to eventually list every book ever written by a Smithie, at the moment we are adding listings a few at a time. We’re trying to pull in some books from a variety of genres. Some of it is what crosses our desk. If you want to see a book you love (or wrote!) listed on the site, send us a message using the contact form below and we’ll add it to our list! If you’ve already told us about it in one of the Facebook groups where we’ve been fishing for info, don’t worry — we’re coming to your book soon.
For a comprehensive list of books by Smithies dating back to 2011, see the Alumnae Association’s Wordsmith page.
Can I submit a review or pitch you an article?
Yeah, that’d be great! We’re looking for reviews of books by Smithie authors, but if you went to Smith we’d also love to hear your reviews/recommendations of books NOT by Smithies (for the “Smithies Recommend” column). We’re also interested in short articles on other book-related subjects. Send us a message through the contact form below and we’ll be in touch.
Are you affiliated with the college?
No, not at all. Opinions expressed here are our own.
A Note on Inclusivity
Books By Smithies supports Smith alums of all genders. We are happy to feature books by men who went to Smith, as long as we can be sure that sharing them won’t out the author or otherwise put them in a difficult position. We also believe in third-person singular they/them (come at us, bro). Lastly, while we may sometimes use alumnae in place of the less formal alums, it is not our intention to exclude non-women who went to Smith — just as co-ed schools don’t exclude women by using the plural form alumni. Maybe that’s not how they did it back in old Rome, but hey — languages evolve.
Who ARE you, exactly?
Whew. I’m going to go ahead and drop the royal “we” now! Books by Smithies is a one-woman show, for now anyway.
I created Books by Smithies after seeing several different books with Smithie authors promoted in a Smith Alum group, thinking they sounded really good, and then promptly losing track of the titles. Wouldn’t it be great, I asked, if there was some way of seeing all kinds of interesting books by Smithies in one place? And then maybe two hours later I thought, what the heck, and I bought the URL. It turns out Smith already maintains <a href=”http://alumnae.smith.edu/spotlight/wordsmith/”>a fairly comprehensive list of books by Smith Alumnae</a> going back to 2011, which freed me up to do something a little more interesting — a Smithie Review of Books, if you will.
I am by no means the most qualified person for this project. For example, I have zero experience in publishing! But Books by Smithies sits at the intersection of three of my favorite things: books, Smith, and the internet. I really hope you’ll like what you see here. Please feel free to send feedback using the form below!
Thanks,
Amanda Hanley Dalzell ’06
