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Ali Smith

A Scottish writer, playwright and journalist, Smith is considered one of the most unique and influential voices in contemporary Anglo-Saxon literature. She studied English Literature at Aberdeen University and began a PhD on American and Irish modernism at Newham College, Cambridge University. After teaching for two years at the University of Strathclyde and working for The Scotsman newspaper, in 1995 she published her first book of short stories, Free Love and Other Stories (Virago Press). Smith writes frequently for The Guardian, New Statesman and The Times Literary Supplement, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She has received numerous literary awards and nominations for her books, including How to Be Both (Hamish Hamilton, 2014 —published in Catalan by Raig Verd, 2015) winner of the Goldsmith Prize (2014), the Costa Novel Award (2014) and the Book of the Year Award (2014); and The Accidental (Hamish Hamilton, 2005 —published in Catalan by Raig Verd/Alfaguara, 2017), one of her seminal works, recognized with the Whitebread Novel Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction. Between 2016 and 2020, Smith published a tetralogy of novels inspired by the four seasons, including Autumn (2016), Winter (2017), Spring (2019) and Summer (2020), published by Raig Verd in Catalan and Nórdica Libros in Spanish, which has been unanimously acclaimed by critics, consolidating the author as one of the most important names in English letters.

Update: 4 April 2022

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Ali Smith

Making political writing into an art