An Evening with Zadie Smith: Bestselling author of White Teeth and On Beauty

Zadie Smith, born in North London in 1975 to an English father and Jamaican mother, studied English at Cambridge and graduated in 1997. Her debut novel, White Teeth, became an international bestseller, winning major awards including the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread First Novel Award, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. It has been translated into more than twenty languages, adapted for television and the stage, and recognised by the New York Public Library and the New York Times as one of the most important books of the century.

Her second novel, The Autograph Man, won the 2003 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize. Smith was twice named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. On Beauty won the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction and appears on several lists of the best books of the 21st century. NW was shortlisted for major prizes, named one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2012, and adapted by the BBC. Swing Time was a New York Times bestseller, and her most recent novel, The Fraud, was widely acclaimed as one of the best books of 2023.

Smith’s story collection Grand Union received multiple shortlist honours, and her play The Wife of Willesden won the 2022 Critics’ Circle Theatre Award. She has published several essay collections, with Dead and Alive forthcoming in 2025. Her honours include the Langston Hughes Medal, the St. Louis Literary Award, and the Bodley Medal. She is a member of the Royal Society of Literature and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and lives in London.