Zadie Smith facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Zadie Smith
FRSL
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Smith announcing the 2010 National Book Critics Circle award finalists in fiction
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| Born | Sadie Smith 25 October 1975 London, England |
| Occupation |
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| Education | King's College, Cambridge (BA) |
| Period | 2000–present |
| Literary movement |
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| Notable works | White Teeth (2000) On Beauty (2005) NW (2012) Swing Time (2016) |
| Spouse |
Nick Laird
(m. 2004) |
| Children | 2 |
| Relatives | Ben Bailey Smith (brother) |
Zadie Smith (born Sadie; 25 October 1975) is a famous English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her first novel, White Teeth, was published in 2000. It quickly became a best-seller and won many awards. Since 2010, Smith has been a professor of Creative Writing at New York University.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Zadie Smith was born on 25 October 1975 in Willesden, north-west London. Her mother, Yvonne Bailey, was from Jamaica, and her father, Harvey Smith, was English. When she was 14, she changed her name from Sadie to Zadie.
Smith's parents separated when she was a teenager. She has several siblings, including her younger brothers, who are known as the rappers Doc Brown and Luc Skyz. As a child, Zadie loved tap dancing and thought about a career in musical theatre. Later, while at university, she sang jazz to earn money and wanted to become a journalist.
Smith went to local schools, then studied English literature at King's College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge, she wrote several short stories. These stories were published in a collection of student writing called The Mays Anthology. A publisher noticed her talent and offered her a contract for her first novel.
Writing Career
First Novels and Early Success
Zadie Smith's first novel, White Teeth, was introduced to publishers in 1997, even before it was finished. A publisher named Hamish Hamilton won the rights to publish it. Smith completed the book during her last year at the University of Cambridge. When White Teeth was published in 2000, it became a best-seller right away. It received praise from around the world and won awards like the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The novel was even made into a TV show in 2002.
Her second novel, The Autograph Man, came out in 2002. It sold well, but critics did not like it as much as White Teeth.
Exploring New Ideas
After The Autograph Man, Smith visited the United States. She began working on a book of essays called The Morality of the Novel. In this book, she looked at different 20th-century writers and their ideas about right and wrong. Some parts of this book later appeared in her essay collection Changing My Mind, published in 2009.
Smith's third novel, On Beauty, was published in 2005. This book was set mostly in the Boston area. It was more popular with critics than her second novel. On Beauty was nominated for the Man Booker Prize and won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2006.
In the same year, Smith released Martha and Hanwell. This book contained two short stories about characters facing difficulties.
Teaching and Later Works
After teaching at Columbia University School of the Arts, Smith became a professor of fiction at New York University in 2010. She also wrote reviews for Harper's Magazine and contributed often to The New York Review of Books. In 2010, The Guardian newspaper asked Smith for her "10 rules for writing fiction." One of her rules was: "Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it."
Smith's novel NW was published in 2012. It takes place in the Kilburn area of north-west London, which is where the title's postcode, NW6, comes from. This novel was nominated for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize. NW was also adapted into a BBC television film in 2016.
In 2015, it was announced that Smith and her husband, Nick Laird, were working on a science fiction movie script. Smith later clarified that her role was mainly to help improve the English dialogue for the film, titled High Life.
Smith's fifth novel, Swing Time, came out in 2016. This book was inspired by her childhood love of tap dancing. It was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2017.
Her first collection of short stories, Grand Union, was published in 2019. In 2020, she released a collection of six essays called Intimations. She donated the money earned from this book to charity.
Playwriting and Historical Fiction
In 2021, Smith's first play, The Wife of Willesden, premiered. She wrote it after her London borough, Brent, was chosen as the 2020 London Borough of Culture. Smith adapted "The Wife of Bath's Tale" from Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Her version changes the pilgrimage to a pub crawl in modern London. The main character, Alvita, is a Jamaican-born British woman who discusses her life and experiences. The play explores themes of marriage and personal freedom.
In 2023, Smith published a historical novel called The Fraud. This book focuses on the Tichborne case, a famous 19th-century court case about a man pretending to be someone else. The story covers the period from the 1830s to the 1870s. Reviewers praised The Fraud for being both modern and true to its historical setting. It also highlights the story of Andrew Bogle, a Black man who grew up enslaved in Jamaica and was a key witness in the trials.
Personal Life
Zadie Smith met her husband, Nick Laird, at the University of Cambridge. They got married in 2004. Smith dedicated her novel On Beauty to him.
The couple lived in Rome, Italy, for a year, and later lived in New York City and the Kilburn area of London. They have two children.
Smith describes herself as "unreligious" but is curious about the role religion plays in others' lives. She sees her own way of thinking as a "sentimental humanist," meaning she believes in human values and reason.
Zadie Smith's favorite book is Middlemarch by George Eliot. She has called it an "extraordinary achievement" because it covers so many different aspects of society and philosophy.
Awards and Recognition
Zadie Smith has received many awards and honors for her writing.
- In 2002, she was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
- In 2004, a BBC poll named her one of the top twenty most influential people in British culture.
- Granta magazine included her on its list of 20 best young authors in both 2003 and 2013.
- Her novel White Teeth was listed among Time magazine's 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.
Here are some of the specific awards her books have won:
- White Teeth: Won the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Guardian First Book Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers’ First Book Award.
- The Autograph Man: Won the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize.
- On Beauty: Won the Commonwealth Writers’ Best Book Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction. It was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
- NW: Shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Women's Prize for Fiction.
- Swing Time: Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017.
- In 2016, she received the Welt-Literaturpreis.
- In 2017, she was awarded the Langston Hughes Medal.
- In 2018, she won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism for her book Feel Free.
- In 2019, Grand Union was a finalist for The Story Prize.
- In 2022, she won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year as a featured artist on We Are by Jon Batiste.
- In 2022, she received the Bodley Medal, a high honor from the Bodleian Libraries.
- In 2022, she received the PEN/Audible Literary Service Award for her achievements as a writer.
- In 2022, she won the Critics' Circle Theatre Award for "Most Promising Playwright" for The Wife of Willesden.
- In 2023, The Fraud won the first Westport Prize for Literature.
- In 2024, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
See also
In Spanish: Zadie Smith para niños
