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Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith FRSL (born 25 October 1975)[1] is a contemporary English[2] novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her first novel was called White Teeth. It immediately became a best-seller and won awards. Her most recent book is Feel Free (2018). It is a collection of essays. She has been a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University since September 2010.[3]

Zadie Smith
Smith announcing the 2010 National Book Critics Circle award finalists in fiction
Smith announcing the 2010 National Book Critics Circle award finalists in fiction
BornSadie Smith
(1975-10-25) 25 October 1975 (age 48)
Brent, London, England
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • professor
LanguageEnglish
Alma materKing's College, Cambridge
Period2000–present
Literary movement
Spouse
Nick Laird (m. 2004)
Children2
Zadie Smith's voice

Recorded September 2013 from the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs
Problems listening to this file? See media help.
Website
www.zadiesmith.com

Early life

Smith was born Sadie Smith in Willesden in the north-west London borough of Brent. Her mother was Yvonne Bailey and her father was Harvey Smith. Bailey is Jamaican and Smith is English[4] At the age of 14, she changed her name to Zadie.[5]

Smith's mother grew up in Jamaica, and emigrated to England in 1969.[1] Smith's parents divorced when she was a teenager. She has a half-sister, a half-brother, and two younger brothers (one is the rapper and stand-up comedian Doc Brown, and the other is the rapper Luc Skyz). As a child, Smith liked tap dancing.[1] As a teenager, she considered a career in musical theatre. When she was a university student, Smith earned money as a jazz singer. She also wanted to become a journalist. Despite earlier ambitions, literature became her main interest.

Education

Smith attended the local state schools, Malorees Junior School and Hampstead Comprehensive School. She then studied English literature atKing's College, Cambridge. She did not leave Cambridge with a double First. She got a Third on her Part Ones.[6]

The popular British comedy double act Mitchell and Webb may have rejected Smith from the Cambridge Footlights in the 1990s.[7]

At Cambridge, Smith published a number of short stories in a collection of new student writing called The Mays Anthology. A publisher liked the stories and offered her a contract for her first novel. Smith contacted a literary agent, and A. P. Watt represented her.[8] Smith returned to guest-edit the anthology in 2001.[9]

Career

Smith's first novel White Teeth was introduced to the publishing world in 1997, before it was completed. Publishers saw part of the manuscript and an auction for the rights started. Hamish Hamilton won. Smith completed White Teeth during her final year at Cambridge. It was published in 2000. The novel immediately became a best-seller. It was praised internationally and won awards, including: the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Betty Trask Award. The novel was adapted for television in 2002.[1] Smith was writer-in-residence at the ICA in London and later published, as editor, an anthology of sex writing, Piece of Flesh, as the main work of this job.

In interviews, Smith reported that all the attention around her first novel had caused her to suffer briefly from writer's block. But, her second novel, The Autograph Man, was published in 2002 and was a commercial success. Critics did not like it as much as White Teeth.

After the publication of The Autograph Man, Smith visited the United States as a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.[10]

Smith's third novel, On Beauty, was published in September 2005. The story happens mostly in and around Greater Boston. It received better reviews than The Autograph Man: it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize,[11] and won the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.[12]

Also in 2005, Smith published Martha and Hanwell. This book combines two short stories about two troubled characters. The stories had been published first in Granta and The New Yorker. Penguin published Martha and Hanwell with a new introduction by the author as part of their pocket series to celebrate their 70th birthday.[13] The first story, "Martha, Martha", is about Smith's familiar themes of race and postcolonial identity. "Hanwell in Hell" is about a man in trouble trying to understand the death of his wife.[14] In December 2008 she guest-edited the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.[15]

After teaching fiction at Columbia University School of the Arts, Smith joined New York University as a tenured professor of fiction in 2010.[16]

Smith's novel NW was published in 2012. The story happens in the Kilburn area of north-west London. So, the title comes from the local postcode, NW6. NW was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize and the Women's Prize for Fiction.[17] NW was made into a BBC television film directed by Saul Dibb and adapted by Rachel Bennette.[18] Starring Nikki Amuka-Bird and Phoebe Fox,[19] it was broadcast on BBC Two on 14 November 2016.[20][21]

Smith's fifth novel, Swing Time, was published in November 2016.[22] It was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2017.

Between March and October 2011, Smith was the monthly New Books reviewer for Harper's Magazine.[23][24] She often writes for The New York Review of Books.[25] In 2010, The Guardian newspaper asked Smith for her "10 rules for writing fiction".[26]

Personal life

Smith met Nick Laird at Cambridge University. They married in 2004 in the Chapel of King's College, Cambridge. Smith dedicated On Beauty to "my dear Laird". She also uses his name in White Teeth: "An' all the good-lookin' men, all the rides like your man Nicky Laird, they're all dead."[27]

The couple lived in Rome, Italy, from November 2006 to 2007. They now live in New York City and Queen's Park, London.[28] They have two children, Katherine (Kit) and Harvey (Hal).[29]

Bibliography

Novels

Short fiction

Collections
  • "Martha and Hanwell" (2005)
  • "Grand Union" (2019)
Stories[30]
Title Year First published Reprinted/collected Notes
"Now More Than Ever" 2018 23 July 2018 The New Yorker "Now More Than Ever"
"The Lazy River " 2017 2017 The New Yorker
"Two Men Arrive in a Village" 2016 6 & 13 June 2016 The New Yorker "Two Men Arrive in a Village"
"Escape From New York" 2015
"Big Week" 2014 The Paris Review Smith, Zadie (2014). "Big Week" (in en). The Paris Review Summer 2014 (209). ISSN 0031-2037 
      . https://www.theparisreview.org/fiction/6315/big-week-zadie-smith. Retrieved 8 May 2018. 
"Moonlit Landscape with Bridge" 2014 Smith, Zadie (10 February 2014). "Moonlit landscape with bridge". The New Yorker 89 (48): 64–71. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/10/moonlit-landscape-with-bridge. 
"The Embassy of Cambodia" 2013
"Meet the President!" 2013
"Permission to Enter" 2012
"Hanwell Senior" 2007
"The Girl with Bangs" 2001
"The Waiter's Wife" 1999

Non-fiction

As editor

Critical studies and reviews of Smith's work

  • Smallwood, Christine (November 2012). "Mental weather : the many voices of Zadie Smith". Reviews. Harper's Magazine. 325 (1950): 86–90. Review of NW.
  • Tew, Philip (ed.). Reading Zadie Smith: The First Decade and Beyond. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.
  • Tew, Philip. Zadie Smith. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
  • Walters, Tracey (ed.). Zadie Smith: Critical Essays. New York: Peter Lang Publications, 2008.

Awards and recognition

She was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002. In a 2004 In a BBC poll, cultural researchers named Smith in the top twenty most influential people in British culture.[32][33]

In 2003, she was included on Granta's list of 20 best young authors,[34] and was also included in the 2013 list.[35] She joined New York University's Creative Writing Program as a tenured professor on 1 September 2010.[36] Smith has won the Orange Prize for Fiction.[37] and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 2006[12] Her novel White Teeth was included in Time magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Aida Edemariam (3 September 2005). "Profile: Learning Curve". The Guardian. http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1560999,00.html. Retrieved 9 March 2011. 
  2. ↑ "Perhaps Soon Zadie Smith Will Know What She's Doing (and then Just You Watch Out) by Dave". www.powells.com. Retrieved 4 February 2019.
  3. ↑ "Zadie Smith to Join NYU Creative Writing Faculty", NYU, 25 June 2009.
  4. ↑ "Writers: Zadie Smith" Archived 2012-09-04 at the Wayback Machine, Literature - British Council.
  5. ↑ Wood, Gaby (25 August 2012). "The Return of Zadie Smith". The Telegraph. Retrieved 23 July 2013.
  6. ↑ Stephanie Merritt, "She's young, black, British – and the first publishing sensation of the millennium", The Observer, 16 January 2000.
  7. ↑ Smith, Zadie (7 January 2009). "Personal History: Dead Man Laughing". The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/22/081222fa_fact_smith. Retrieved 9 March 2011. 
  8. ↑ "AP Watt". Archived from the original on 19 May 2011. Retrieved 7 March 2011.
  9. ↑ "The Mays XIX: Guest Editors". Archived from the original on 30 August 2011. Retrieved 7 June 2011.
  10. ↑ 2002–2003 Radcliffe Institute Fellows Archived 23 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ↑ Ihsan Taylor (17 September 2006). "Paperback Row". New York Times Book Review. https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03EEDD1731F934A2575AC0A9609C8B63&ref=bookreviews. Retrieved 14 March 2012. 
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 "On Beauty". Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. Retrieved 4 March 2015.
  13. ↑ Thorpe, Vanessa (22 May 2005). "Race row may spoil Penguin's birthday". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  14. ↑ Smith, Zadie (2005), Martha and Hanwell. London: Penguin.
  15. ↑ Guest editor: Zadie Smith. BBC News. 29 December 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7801000/7801054.stm. Retrieved 9 March 2011. 
  16. ↑ Adrian Versteegh, "Zadie Smith Joins NYU Creative Writing Faculty", Poets & Writers, 24 July 2009.
  17. ↑ "Zadie Smith" Archived 2021-02-24 at the Wayback Machine at Rogers, Coleridge & White.
  18. ↑ Wollaston, Sam (14 November 2016). "NW review – Zadie Smith's London tale has never felt so relevant". TheGuardian.com. Retrieved 15 November 2016.
  19. ↑ Onwuemezi, Natasha, "Amuka-Bird and Fox to star in NW adaptation", The Bookseller, 10 June 2016.
  20. ↑ Meltzer, Tom, "NW star Nikki Amuka-Bird: 'Zadie is purposefully challenging the viewer'", The Guardian, 14 November 2016.
  21. ↑ Lobb, Adrian, "NW Star Nikki Amuka-Bird Interview: 'Bursting through the glass ceiling can cause damage'" Archived 2016-11-22 at the Wayback Machine, The Big Issue, 21 November 2016.
  22. ↑ Pearce, Katie (4 November 2015). "Author Zadie Smith shares bits of her unpublished fourth novel, 'Swing, Time'". Retrieved 9 February 2016.
  23. ↑ Zeke Turner (20 September 2010). "Zadie Smith Takes Over New Books Column for Harper's Magazine". The New York Observer. http://observer.com/2010/09/zadie-smith-takes-over-new-books-column-for-emharpers-magazineem/. Retrieved 9 March 2011. 
  24. ↑ "Zadie Smith". Harper's Magazine. http://harpers.org/author/zadiesmith/. Retrieved 4 March 2015. 
  25. ↑ ZadieSmith page at The New York Review of Books.
  26. ↑ "Ten rules for writing fiction (part two)". The Guardian. 20 February 2010. Retrieved 12 April 2015.
  27. ↑ Smith, Zadie (2000). White Teeth. London: Vintage.]
  28. ↑ Zach Baron (15 July 2009). "Irish Novelist Nick Laird Goes Utterly Pug". Village Voice. Archived from the original on 24 April 2015. Retrieved 9 March 2011.
  29. ↑ Richard Godwin (28 June 2013). "The world according to Zadie Smith". Evening Standard.
  30. ↑ Short stories unless otherwise noted.
  31. ↑ Online version is titled "Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's imaginary portraits".
  32. ↑ iPod designer leads culture list. 17 November 2016. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3481599.stm. 
  33. ↑ "iPod's low-profile creator tops cultural chart". The Independent. 17 November 2016. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/ipods-low-profile-creator-tops-cultural-chart-68924.html. 
  34. ↑ "Best of Young British Novelists 2003". Granta.
  35. ↑ "Zadie Smith". Granta.com. Retrieved 4 March 2015.
  36. ↑ "Zadie Smith Joins Faculty". New York University. 1 September 2010. Retrieved 9 March 2011.
  37. ↑ "Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction - 2006". womensprizeforfiction.org. Archived from the original on 3 March 2015. Retrieved 4 March 2015.
  38. ↑ "The Man Booker Prize 2017 | The Man Booker Prizes". themanbookerprize.com. Archived from the original on 19 October 2016. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  39. ↑ ""Welt"-Literaturpreis 2016 für Zadie Smith" (in de). Die Welt. 7 October 2016. https://www.welt.de/kultur/literarischewelt/article158607455/Welt-Literaturpreis-2016-fuer-Zadie-Smith.html. Retrieved 10 October 2016. 
  40. ↑ "Zadie Smith Wins CCNY's Langston Hughes Medal", CUNY, 31 August 2017.
  41. ↑ "Zadie Smith of New York University to Receive the Langston Hughes Medal", The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 4 September 2017.
  42. ↑ "LHF 2017 Celebrates Zadie Smith" Archived 2017-12-01 at the Wayback Machine, The City College of New York.

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