Kansas author Sarah Smarsh named national award finalist for Dolly Parton book
Kansas author Sarah Smarsh, who was a finalist for the prestigious National Book Awards in 2018, has been nominated for another national award for her latest book.
Smarsh’s “She Come by It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs” is one of five finalists in the nonfiction category chosen by the National Book Critics Circle.
Also among the nonfiction finalists announced Sunday is Walter Johnson, a native of Columbia, Missouri, for “The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States.”
Smarsh’s much-honored 2018 book, “Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth,” was a New York Times best-seller. She is a University of Kansas alum who describes herself on her website as “born a fifth-generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side, the child of generations of teen mothers on her maternal side.”
“She Come by It Natural,” originally published as a four-part series for roots-music magazine No Depression, explores the overlooked contributions to social progress by women of poverty as exemplified by Dolly Parton’s life and art.
The book is the next selection of the FYI Book Club, a partnership between The Star and the Kansas City Public Library. Look for an interview with Smarsh next week.
Johnson previously wrote “Soul by Soul: Life Inside in the Antebellum Slave Market” (1999) and “River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Mississippi Valley’s Cotton Kingdom” (2013). He is the Winthrop Professor of History and professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.
The National Book Critics Circle honors 2020 publications in autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction and poetry. The winners will be announced March 25.
This story was originally published January 25, 2021 at 4:19 PM.
