Ray Smith is a Canadian novelist and short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 writer who lives in Mabou, Cape Breton

Cape Breton Island

Cape Breton Island is an island on the Atlantic coast of North America. It likely corresponds to the word Breton, the French demonym for Brittany....

, Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...

. He was born in Cape Breton in 1941 and educated at Dalhousie University

Dalhousie University

Dalhousie University is a public research university located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The university comprises eleven faculties including Schulich School of Law and Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine. It also includes the faculties of architecture, planning and engineering located at...

, Halifax, Nova Scotia (B.A. 1963), and at Concordia University

Concordia University

Concordia University is a comprehensive Canadian public university located in Montreal, Quebec, one of the two universities in the city where English is the primary language of instruction...

, Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

, Quebec

Quebec

Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

 (M.A. 1985). He worked as an instructor in English at Dawson College

Dawson College

Dawson College was the first English CEGEP and is located in Westmount, just west of downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Dawson College is located near the heart of downtown Montreal in a former nunnery on 4.85 hectares of green space...

, Montreal, until his retirement

Retirement

Retirement is the point where a person stops employment completely. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours.Many people choose to retire when they are eligible for private or public pension benefits, although some are forced to retire when physical conditions don't allow the person to...

 in 2007.

Smith's works include the novels Lord Nelson Tavern (McClelland & Stewart, 1974), A Night at the Opera (Porcupine's Quill, 1992), which won the 1992 QSPELL Hugh MacLennan Award for Best Novel, and The Man Who Loved Jane Austen (Porcupine's Quill, 1999). He has also published the short story collections Cape Breton Is the Thought Control Centre of Canada (Anansi Press, 1969) and Century (Stoddart

Stoddart

Stoddart may refer to:People*Andrew Stoddart , English cricketer and rugby union player*Archibald Peile Stoddart , Rear-Admiral of the Royal Navy, Commander of the 5th cruiser squadron at the Battle of the Falklands...

, 1986). His short fiction has also appeared in numerous anthologies.

In August 2010, literary critics Alex Good and Stephen W. Beattie included Smith in their list of the ten most underrated writers in Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, published on the National Post

National Post

The National Post is a Canadian English-language national newspaper based in Don Mills, a district of Toronto. The paper is owned by Postmedia Network Inc. and is published Mondays through Saturdays...

's website.