Jane Smiley was born in Los Angeles, but raised from the age of six in St. Louis. She received her B. A. (1971) from Vassar College, M.A. (1975), M.F.A. (1976), and Ph.D. (1978) from the University of Iowa.

Smiley joined the English faculty at Iowa State University in 1981 as an assistant professor. She was promoted to associate professor in 1984, full professor in 1989 and distinguished professor in 1992. She left the University in 1997.

Smiley is the author of several titles, including The Greenlanders (1988), which was the result of her Fulbright-Hays grant to study for a year in Iceland; A Thousand Acres (1991), an adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear that won her 1992's Pulitzer Prize for fiction; Moo (1995), a satirical novel about a land-grant university; and Horse Heaven (2000), written after her move to California's horse country.

Smiley was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994.

This collection (1981-2010) consists of news clippings about Jane Smiley, an article she wrote for the New York Times, her Iowa State University personnel file, a list of her publications, and a copy of her curriculum vitae from the 1980s.