Lori Smith was interviewed for BookCast by Fairfax County Public Library Director Sam Clay. BookCast is sponsored by Virginia Commerce Bank through the Fairfax Library Foundation.

• Smith is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Washington Post Book World, Publishers Weekly, Washingtonian and Today's Christian Woman. She is the author of Walking With Jane Austen and The Single Truth and creator of the popular literary blog Jane Austen Quote of the Day.



• Her love for Jane Austen started when she was in college and first read Pride & Prejudice at her grandparents' house over Christmas break. In July of 2005, she set off for a month in England to follow Austen's life, looking for a connection with the writer whose books (and the movies based on them) had become like literary comfort food for her.



• From Publisher's Weekly: "In this engaging, deeply personal and well-researched travelogue, Smith journeys to England to soak in the places of Jane Austen's life and writings. ... this is an unusual look at Jane Austen. Readers will learn plenty of biographical details - about Austen's small and intimate circle of family and friends, her candid letters to her sister, her possible loves and losses, her never-married status, her religious feelings, and her untimely death at the age of 41. But it is the author's passionate connection to 'Jane' - the affinity she feels and her imaginings of Austen's inner life - that bring Austen to life in ways no conventional biographer could."



• About A Walk With Jane Austen.