Carol Smith

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Carol Smith is an award-winning journalist and editor for NPR affiliate KUOW in Seattle. Previously, she worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Los Angeles Times. She has been a PEN Literary Finalist for her journalism, been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize seven times, and twice for the Pushcart. Her essays and other writings have appeared in more than a dozen literary journals. She was recently named Editor of the Year by the Public Media Journalists Association. Her memoir, CROSSING THE RIVER: SEVEN STORIES THAT SAVED MY LIFE came out in 2021 from Abrams Press in New York. It’s the story of how she dealt with the unexpected death of her seven-year-old son, Christopher, and the seven people who unwittingly helped her on that journey. These are stories of survival and transformation, of people confronting devastating situations that changed them in unexpected ways. A mixture of memoir and reporting, this book is about posttraumatic resilience in the face of grief and how other people’s stories can help us through the most devastating experiences.