Betty Smith burst onto the literary scene in 1943 with her debut novel, A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN. The New York Times called it “the best first novel I have seen in many a moon…here is a book worth getting excited about and an author worth cheering.” Smith never graduated from high school, but she pursued an education at the University of Michigan, where she won the Avery Hopwood Award in 1931 for her play, BECOMES A WOMAN. The award came with a cash prize and Smith used her $1,000 to accept an invitation to study drama at Yale with the legendary George Pierce Baker. She pursued her theatrical ambitions with some success for another ten years, until she finally decided to write her novel about growing up in Brooklyn. BECOMES A WOMAN, never published, or produced, is a play about a 19-year-old girl living with her family in Brooklyn who learns the hardest lesson a girl can face on her way to becoming a woman.