Smiley published her first novel, "Barn Blind", in 1980, and won a 1985 O. Henry Award for her short story "Lily", which was published in "The Atlantic Monthly". Her best-selling "A Thousand Acres", a story based on William Shakespeare's "King Lear", received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. It was adapted into a film of the same title in 1997. Her novella "The Age of Grief" was made into the 2002 film "The Secret Lives of Dentists". Her essay "Feminism Meets the Free Market" was included in the 2006 anthology "Mommy Wars" by "Washington Post" writer Leslie Morgan Steiner. Her essay "Why Bother?" appears in the anthology "Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting, "published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2013.