Ali Smith

Ali Smith is a Scottish novelist, short story writer, and playwright born in Inverness in 1962. She studied at Aberdeen and Cambridge and has lived in Cambridge. She is one of the most critically acclaimed British writers of her generation, known for fiction that combines formal innovation with warmth, wit, and political engagement. Her novels include Hotel World (2001), The Accidental (2005), There but for the (2011), Artful (2012), and the Seasonal Quartet — Autumn (2016), Winter (2017), Spring (2019), and Summer (2020) — a series written in real-time response to Brexit and COVID-19. Summer won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction in 2021. Her story collections include Free Love (1995), Other Stories (1999), The Whole Story and Other Stories (2003), and The First Person and Other Stories (2008). Smith has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize four times. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has received honorary doctorates from numerous universities.