Kay Nolte Smith
From Philosopedia
Smith, Kay Nolte (7 July 1932 - 25 September 1993)
Smith was an actor, teacher, atheist, and award-winning novelist. Born in Minnesota, she received her B.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1952 and her Master's degree in theater and speech from the University of Utah in 1955.
In 1958, she married Prof. Philip Smith and with her husband went into professional theatre together, co-producing Ayn Rand's Penthouse Legend. She made TV commercials, performed off Broadway for a decade, joined several faculties as a teacher, then turned her energies to writing.
Her first novel, Watcher (1980), won the Edgar Allen Poe award, followed by Mindspell (1983), Country of the Heart (1988), and Tale of the Wind (1991).
Mindspell delved into the witchhunts. After her research for that book, she asserted in a 1983 interview in Feminist Connecticut that records of this heinous time should be
- mandatory reading in every Sunday school. This is what made me an atheist. Consider how deeply witch craze was rooted in religion. The papal sanction was not abolished for six centuries. How can anyone belong to a church that treated its members this way?
When she spoke to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's national convention in 1983, she said,
- The tragedy is that every brain cell devoted to belief in the supernatural is a brain cell one cannot use to make life richer or easier or happier.
She and her husband ran a summer theater in Michigan, where they performed at dinner theaters and co-produced Ayn Rand’s “Penthouse Legend” (known as “Night of January 16”). She wrote Watcher (1980), a novel which won the Edgar Allen Poe award, followed by Mindspell (1983), Country of the Heart (1988), and Tale of the Wind (1991). In 1983 she spoke to the Freedom From Religion Foundation convention in Peoria, Illinois.
