Zadie Smith was born in the Willesden area of London on October 27, 1975 to a Jamaican mother and a British father. She was originally called “Sadie” but changed her name as a child because it seemed more interesting. Though she began writing stories at the age of 6, her main passion as a child was dancing. She slowly transitioned into more of a writer as by the time she got to King’s College, Cambridge, she studied English literature and was set on becoming an academic. Her first major published work was completed in 1997 and was titled “The Newspaper Man” and was featured in May Anthologies, a collection of pieces by students at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Zadie got recognition from the publisher HarperCollins and upon joining an agency, ended up negotiating a contract that resulted with her first novel White Teeth in January of 2000. Her novel was deemed an impressive debut at the age of 25 and she instantly became a public figure that was seen as an embracer of multicultural Britain. White Teeth was adapted into TV by the BBC and aired in 2002. Zadie gathered an immense amount of hype and anticipation for her second novel The Autograph Man which was not as successful as her first novel but nonetheless won her awards and praise. Zadie ended up taking a position at Harvard in 2002 and moved to the US which was seen as a move to avoid the press as it was known she did not care about the limelight. Smith would go on to write three more novels. Her third On Beauty was published in 2006, her fourth NW was published in 2012, and her fifth Swing Time was published in 2016. Zadie married a fellow author Nick Laird in 2004 and the settled in New York. Zadie is currently a tenured professor of fiction at New York University.
Link to Zadie’s Twitter
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