Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith was born in North London in 1975 to an English father and a Jamaican mother. Originally named Sadie, she changed her name to Zadie at 14. Smith wrote her acclaimed first novel White Teeth during her final year at King’s College, Cambridge. Moving to the US, she studied at Harvard and taught creative writing at Columbia University School of Fine Arts before taking her current post at New York University. She divides her time between New York and London, with her husband, writer Nick Laird, and their two children.

  Smith has received nearly 20 nominations and awards for her writing. In recent years she has branched outm into short stories and critical essays. In an article in The Guardian newspaper she was asked to give her 10 golden rules for writing fiction, which included: “Tell the truth throughwhichever veil comes to hand— but tell it.”