Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith was born on October 25, 1975 in Brent, London. Her birth name was Sadie, which she changed at the age of 14 to Zadie. Her rise as an author began while still in her final year at King’s College in Cambridge. Her debut book White Teeth (2002) became a bestseller almost immediately. It is this title that earned her the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and The Betty Trask Award. She published her second book, Autograph Man (2002), in the same year that she was elected into the Royal Society of Literature.

Her book On Beauty (2005) earned her the Orange Prize For Fiction and the Anisfield- Wolf Book Awards in 2006. Her success and skills resulted in her being the position of tenured professor of fiction at New York University in 2010.  In 2011, Harper’s Magazine featured her as a monthly book reviewer. She then went on to publish NW (2012) and Swingtime (2017). Swingtime (2017) has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize of 2017.