Charlie Smith is the author of six novels and seven books of poetry. Three of his works have been named New York Times Notable Books. His new novel is Three Delays, published by Harper Perennial on May 18, 2010. He's received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Aga Khan Prize. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s, the New Republic, the New York Times, the Nation and numerous other magazines and journals. He lives in New York City and Key West. 
On your nightstand now:
Currently that would be The Marquise of O and Other Stories by Heinrich von Kleist and Your Face Tomorrow, vol. 3, by Javier Marias, along with Tolstoy's War and Peace and Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road. Revisiting the latter two gives me a lot of pleasure right now, especially Tolstoy. The way he orchestrates his story over vast stretches time and space and yet keeps you engaged on the most human level is what interests me the most.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Pogo cartoons. This may not qualify as a book, but I loved reading those cartoons alongside my father; they set us both off rolling with laughter. As for reading on my own, my town had one of those wonderful Carnegie libraries and as a small boy I devoured a series of brief biographies the library stocked. Mostly they were biographies of sports figures, explorers and frontiersmen, like Daniel Boone. Just the kind of stories that fill a young boy's heart with dreams.
Your top five authors:
This list continues to shift, but right now I'd say: Tolstoy, Proust, Beckett, Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy.
Book you've faked reading:
Surely a few back in college lit classes, but I couldn't tell you the titles.
Book you're an evangelist for:
I don't really consider myself an evangelist for any particular book, but my wife thinks I am--for The Dog of the South by Charles Portis, so I guess that's what it'll have to be. (If you haven't read, you're in for a treat.)
Book you've bought for the cover:
Art books, and plenty of them.
Book that changed your life:
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. It's one of these books that came along at just the right time for me.
Favorite line from a book:
I'm a poet, not just a novelist, and there is such a profusion of beautiful lines written in the English language, I'd be hard pressed to choose. But here's one I'm particularly fond of, from John Donne's "Air and Angels": "For, nor in nothing, nor in things/ Extreme and scattering bright, can love inhere."
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
One that comes to mind is Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano. I envy those who haven't read it yet.
