Dinitia Smith

Dinitia Smith

Born	(1945-12-26) December 26, 1945 (age 77) Cumberland, Maryland, U.S.
Other names	Dinitia McCarthy
Occupations	Author filmmaker
Years active	1971–present
Spouse	David Nasaw (m. 1978)
Children	2

Dinitia Smith (born December 26, 1945) is an American author and filmmaker.

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Early life

Smith was born in Cumberland, Maryland, and raised primarily in Great Britain, where her father was a journalist. She came to the United States in 1959, and lived in New York City and Westchester. After graduating from Smith College,^[1] she worked as a reporter for the Associated Press in New York.^[2] She enrolled in the New York University Film School, and in 1971 obtained a Masters of Fine Arts.

Career

In 1971, she wrote and directed her first film, Passing Quietly Through, under her then-married name McCarthy.^[3] That film was one of the first films by a woman to be chosen for the New York Film Festival. Smith continued to make documentaries, including some with American documentary filmmaker, David Grubin,^[4] and also wrote several screenplays.^[5] Her films have been shown at the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art.^[6]

In 1975, Smith won an Emmy Award for a film she made for WNBC–TV.^[7] She published her first novel, The Hard Rain, in 1980. Her second novel, Remember This, won her fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts^[8] and the Ingram Merrill Foundation.^[9] Her short fiction has been published in numerous literary journals.^[10]^[11]

Smith was also a contributing editor at New York magazine;^[12] from 1995 to 2006 she worked for The New York Times, where she wrote about arts and intellectual trends and ideas.^[13] Her third novel, The Illusionist, published in 1997, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.^[14]

The Honeymoon, her biographical novel about the 19th century writer George Eliot, was published in 2016. The New York Times wrote that "Smith's enchanting account humanizes a figure renowned as much for her refutation of conventional female stereotypes and social limitations as for her genius for story and language".^[15] A reviewer for The Washington Post called the book "the perfect example of when fictional storytelling about an eminent person is warranted".^[16]

Smith's fifth novel, The Prince, (Arcade Publishing, 2022) is a contemporary retelling of Henry James's The Golden Bowl. NPR called The Prince "a winner …a compelling story of sexual obsession and the expectations and tolerances of society.”^[17] Novelist Lee Child wrote The Prince is “Beautiful, elegant and delicate.”^[18] The National Book Review called the novel "deliciously satisfying."^[19]