Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith was born Sadie Smith on 25 October 1975 in Willesden, north-west London, of Jamaican and English descent. She changed her name to Zadie at age fourteen. Educated at local schools and King's College, Cambridge, where she studied English literature, Smith published early short stories that led to a publishing deal. She has been a tenured professor at New York University since 2010. Her debut novel White Teeth (2000) became an immediate bestseller, winning the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Guardian First Book Award. On Beauty (2005) won the Orange Prize for Fiction. Other acclaimed novels include NW (2012), Swing Time (2016), and The Fraud (2023), alongside the essay collection Feel Free (2018). She has received a fellowship in the Royal Society of Literature, the Bodley Medal (2022), and election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2023). Married to poet Nick Laird since 2004, she lives between New York and London.