Zadie Smith was born on 25th October 1975, in Willesden, north-west London. After attending local state schools, Smith read English literature at King’s College, Cambridge, where she was published twice in student literature anthology, The Mays. After her short stories caught the attention of publishers in her final year at Cambridge, she reportedly received a six-figure advance for White Teeth (2000), her debut novel. Both White Teeth and Smith’s subsequent novels have been praised for their expansive geographies and attention to location; The Autograph Man (2002) on London; On Beauty (2006), on a British-American family living outside Boston; NW (2012), set in Brent, the borough in which she grew up; and Swing Time (2016) that crossed London, New York and West Africa.
Smith became tenured professor of fiction at New York University in 2010, and spent much of the following decade living between New York and London. In 2020, she moved back to Kilburn, where she lives with her husband and two children; during the pandemic, Smith also published Intimations (2020), an essay collection on living in lockdown amidst a time of reflection on race and society.
