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This Just In: Media

Patricia Smith breaks her silence

By Dan Kennedy

After weeks of maintaining her silence, former Boston Globe columnist Patricia Smith has finally spoken out -- in the pages of the Albany Times-Union, of all places. Smith, who resigned on June 18 after admitting she had faked all or part of four columns, agreed to an interview in advance of a poetry reading she gave in Albany last Saturday. Speaking by phone in what is described as "a weary monotone," Smith talked about her future -- and reluctantly answered a few questions about her downfall.

Smith's first priority these days is a novel-in-progress with a working title of Yummy, based on the life of an 11-year-old gang member in Chicago who was executed. "My agent figures it's a good time now to take the novel proposal to publishers," Smith is quoted as saying -- a bit of cynicism that Times-Union editorial writer Jim McGrath, in an accompanying piece, denounces as evidence of "a career that knows no shame." McGrath's got a point, but he overlooks the fact that Smith was a successful poet and playwright before her journalistic fabrications were exposed.

Smith also has a book, Africans in America, coming out this October. Cowritten with National Book Award winner Charles Johnson (The Middle Passage), it will accompany a four-part PBS documentary on slavery. (In an unfortunate but fitting slip of the keyboard, the book is described in Harcourt Brace's fall catalogue as Smith's "first work of nonfiction.")

Globe editor Matt Storin recently announced that 48 other Smith columns going back to 1995 are under suspicion. Smith has been asked to help with the Globe's ongoing investigation. But in the Times-Union interview, Smith sounds as if her former career is the last thing on her mind.

"I haven't read any of those stories," she says of the Globe's coverage of her demise. "I don't see any need to read them." And she offers this kiss-off when asked whether she'll miss the newspaper business: "I did it for 20 years, and I guess I'll miss it, the way I would miss selling insurance if I did that for 20 years. I'm not panicking over what I'll do next. I'll keep writing and look at the possibilities."