Home / Birthday profiles / Jane Smiley
Portrait of Jane Smiley

Birthday profile

Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley, American novelist

Find birthday twinsOpen interactive profile
Born
September 26, 1949
Age in 2026
77
Zodiac sign
Libra
Birth year
1949

About Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley is an American novelist. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 for her novel A Thousand Acres (1991). Smiley published her first novel, Barn Blind, in 1980, and won a 1985 O. She won the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006, and chaired the judges' panel for the prestigious Man Booker International Prize in 2009. The first novel of the trilogy, Some Luck, was published in 2014 by Random House.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Jane Smiley timeline

  1. Smiley published her first novel, Barn Blind, in 1980, and won a 1985 O.
  2. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 for her novel A Thousand Acres (1991).
  3. She won the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006, and chaired the judges' panel for the prestigious Man Booker International Prize in 2009.
  4. The first novel of the trilogy, Some Luck, was published in 2014 by Random House.

The world when Jane Smiley was born

Jane Smiley was born in 1949. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1949

  • #1 song"Riders in the Sky" – Vaughn Monroe
  • Top movieAll the King's Men
  • Top TV showTexaco Star Theater
  • Best-selling bookThe Egyptian - Mika Waltari

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentJoe Louis retires from boxing as undefeated heavyweight champion
  • Top headlineNATO established
  • Technology milestoneFirst stored-program computer runs its first program
  • Defining fadSilly Putty
  • Notable inventionSilly Putty
  • World population2.52 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderHarry S. Truman
  • Sports championNew York Yankees (World Series)
  • Also wonMinneapolis Lakers (BAA)
  • U.S. population149.2M

1949 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Jane Smiley's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19492026
Gas$0.27$3.45/gal
Average home$8,400$435,000
Average income$5,000$67,500
Minimum wage$0.40$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.46$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population149.2M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.