Zadie Smith | In Conversation with Harry Elam

Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world’s preeminent fiction writers and a brilliant essayist. She contributes regularly to the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.

Her acclaimed first novel, White Teeth (2000), is a vibrant portrait of contemporary multicultural London, told through the stories of three ethnically diverse families. White Teeth won a number of awards and prizes, including the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book), and two BT Ethnic and Multicultural Media Awards (Best Book/Novel and Best Female Media Newcomer). It was also shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Author’s Club First Novel Award. White Teeth has been translated into over twenty languages and was adapted for Channel 4 television for broadcast in autumn 2002, and for the stage in November 2018.

Zadie Smith’s The Autograph Man (2002), a story of loss, obsession and the nature of celebrity, won the 2003 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize for Fiction. In 2003 and 2013 she was named by Granta magazine as one of 20 "Best of Young British Novelists." On Beauty won the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction and her novel NW was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction and was named as one of The New York Times "10 Best Books of 2012." She has published two collections of essays, Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays (2009) and Feel Free (2018). Her most recent novel is Swing Time (November 2016). She is also working on a book of short stories titled Grand Union, and a new novel. In 2017 she was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters. She was also the recipient of the 2017 City College of New York’s Langston Hughes Medal.