Zadie Smith Biography

Zadie Smith was born Sadie Smith on October 27, 1975, in London. Her mother was Jamaican and her father, English. A precocious child, she began writing at a young age and changed her name to Zadie at 14. She began writing her first novel, White Teeth, while a student at the University of Cambridge, where she received a degree in English literature in 1998. Published in 2000, the novel was an international best seller, winning the Whitbread First Novel Award and being named a finalist for other prestigious prizes.

Smith’s subsequent novels include The Autograph Man (2002); On Beauty (2005), winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction; NW (2012); and Swing Time (2016). Her other works include the essay collections Changing My Mind (2009), Feel Free (2018), and Intimations (2020); a short story collection, Grand Union (2019); the play The Wife of Willesden (2021); and Weirdo (2021), a children’s book co-written with her husband, Nick Laird. Elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002, Smith is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has taught at Harvard University and Columbia University and as a professor of creative writing at New York University. Her provocative works explore identity through the lenses of race, class, and identity.