A charismatic Virginia native and former NC State professor, Lee Smith, read excerpts from her new memoir, “Dimestore: A Writer’s Life” during a Friends of the Library author event Wednesday. 

Smith has been telling stories all her life — stories of fact and fiction.

“I write for the reason I’ve always done so: simply to survive,” Lee said. “To make sense of my life. I never know what I think until I read what I’ve written.” 

This is Smith’s first nonfiction book, as she said she is much more comfortable with writing fiction. 

“I was uncomfortable the whole time doing this book,” she said. “In fiction, you have a control you never could in real life. I’m real glad I did it, but it was very unsettling.” 

In “Dimestore,” Smith becomes the main character as she recounts stories she heard throughout her life, particularly in Benjamin Franklin Five-and-Dime, the dime store her father, Ernest Smith, ran and owned for 55 years. According to Smith, on the last day the Five-and-Dime was open, her father fell and broke his ribs causing him to hemorrhage to death.

“Thinking back on it, everybody has always said they don’t know what daddy would have done with his days, and I don’t either … He always put on his tie, and his nice little knit vest, and his jacket and then he went to the store, every day,” Smith said.

Smith spoke fondly of her father, telling the audience about the “little writing house” he built her. Her first experience with narration occurred behind the one-sided glass of her father’s dime store office where she vividly remembers watching the customers. 

“I couldn’t stand for my favorite books to end so I would write more and more to the end of them,” Smith said. 

She also recounted her earliest memories of writing. In one instance, she made her own neighborhood newspaper.

“Martha Sue, my best friend, and I started a neighborhood newspaper which we named the ‘Small Review,’ and I wrote out laboriously and sold it to the neighbors for a nickel … this was my first experience with the power of the press,” Smith said. 

She learned her words were powerful after getting in trouble for facetious things written about her neighbors. 

“I got in lots of trouble, too for my editorials such as one named ‘George McGuire is Too Grumpy’ about the neighbor across the street,” she said. 

Smith did not fail to keep the audience engaged with her wit and southern charm. 

“She’s got a great personality for this, she’s so entertaining,” said attendee Barbara Bass. “Her story is very interesting and very relevant to the upbringings of others in the room.” 

She addressed the issue of the treatment of mental illness in the 1950s throughout the novel. Many members of her family dealt with mental illness in the past and her father, in particular, believed it was a “character flaw” instead of an illness.

 “My story is not a sob story … it’s a love story in a way to the small town and small community,” Smith said. 

She is also the author of short story collection “Cakewalk” and The New York Times bestseller “The Last Girls.”

The event was co-sponsored by Quail Ridge Books, who recently relocated from Ridgewood Shopping Center to North Hills.