Dinitia Smith, author of The Prince, discusses her novel with Erica Melnichok. The Prince is a modern retelling of The Golden Bowl by Henry James. From their grand mansion on the Upper East Side to their magical private island in Long Island Sound, everything points to the Woodford family as being perfect and idyllic. Why, then, is there such tension in the air? Enter Federico, a penniless Italian prince who is about to marry Emily Woodford, the only child of the family’s widowed patriarch, Henry. When Emily's beautiful, enigmatic childhood friend, Christina, appears on the scene as a guest at their wedding, trouble begins, for she and the Prince once had a passionate affair. Henry, however, is also enchanted by Christina. Now both Emily and her father must face a new reality, and learn whom they can, or cannot, trust.
Dinitia Smith is the author of four previous novels, including The Illusionist, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and her short stories have been published in numerous magazines. For eleven years, she was a reporter at the New York Times where she wrote on literary topics and intellectual trends. Smith has won many awards for her writing, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Her Emmy Award winning film, Passing Quietly Through, was chosen for the New York Film Festival, and shown at the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art.
