Michael Farris Smith is the author of NICK, Blackwood, The Fighter, Desperation Road, Rivers, and The Hands of Strangers. He has been awarded the Mississippi Author Award for Fiction, Transatlantic Review Award, and Brick Streets Press Story Award. His novels have appeared on Best of the Year lists with Esquire, Southern Living, Book Riot, and numerous others, and have been named Indie Next List, Barnes & Noble Discover, and Amazon Best of the Month selections. He has been a finalist for the Southern Book Prize, the Gold Dagger Award in the UK, and the Grand Prix des Lectrices in France, and his essays have appeared with The New York Times, Bitter Southerner, Garden & Gun, and more. He lives with his wife and daughters in Oxford, Mississippi.
'Eminently readable' - Times; 'No shortage of excitement' - Mail on Sunday; 'Smith is a well-respected writer with a gift for creating atmosphere' - Telegraph; 'An accomplished writer of Southern gothic fiction' - Sunday Times; 'Vividly imagined and suffused with pulsing narrative energy and an assured, atmospheric sense of period setting and speech' - Irish Times; 'Vivid, visual, strong, poetic' - Herald Scotland; 'Evocative, rich in detail and memorable. You cannot help but think of Gatsby when reading Smith's sensitively written tale... A book to read and reread' - Belfast Telegraph; 'A remarkable achievement' - Independent; 'Exceptionally well written... Nick chimes with Gatsby but even if it didn't this would be a beautiful read in its own right' - NB Magazine; 'Pleasurably escapist and full of colourful characters' - i-news; 'Good and enjoyable... it's a novel that works even if you have never read Gatsby' - Scotsman; 'NICK is an exemplary novel. Smith delivers a moving, full-bodied depiction of a man who has been knocked loose from his moorings and is trying to claw back into his own life' - New York Times; 'NICK is so pitch-perfect, so rich in character and action, so remarkable a combination of elegance and passion, so striking in felt originality that I am almost tempted to say - book gods forgive me - that The Great Gatsby will forever feel like NICK's splendid but somewhat paler sequel' - Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain; 'Stylish, evocative, haunting and wholly original' - Chris Whitaker, author of We Begin at the End