Ali SmithCBEFRSL (born 24 August 1962) is a Scottish author, playwright, academic and journalist. Sebastian Barry described her in 2016 as "Scotland's Nobel laureate-in-waiting".[1]
Smith was born in Inverness on 24 August 1962 to Ann and Donald Smith. Her parents were working-class[2] and she was raised in a council house in Inverness.[3][4] From 1967 to 1974 she attended St. Joseph's RC Primary school, then went on to Inverness High School, leaving in 1980.[5][6]
She studied a joint degree in English language and literature at the University of Aberdeen from 1980 to 1985, coming first in her class in 1982 and gaining a top first in Senior Honours English in 1984.[7] She won the university's Bobby Aitken Memorial Prize for Poetry in 1984.[5]
From 1985 to 1990 she attended Newnham College, Cambridge, studying for a PhD in American and Irish modernism. During her time at Cambridge, she began writing plays and as a result, did not complete her doctorate.[5][8]
Smith moved to Edinburgh from Cambridge in 1990 and worked as a lecturer in Scottish, English and American literature at the University of Strathclyde.[6] She left the university in 1992 because she was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome. She returned to Cambridge to recuperate.[5][8]
As a young woman, Smith held several part-time jobs including waitress, lettuce-cleaner, tourist board assistant, receptionist at BBC Highland and advertising copywriter.[5]
In 2009, she donated the short story "Last" (previously published in the Manchester Review online) to Oxfam's "Ox-Tales" project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the "Fire" collection.[11]
Personal life
Smith lives in Cambridge with her partner, filmmaker Sarah Wood.[12][13]
Ali Smith partnered with the Scottish band Trashcan Sinatras and wrote the lyrics to a song called "Half An Apple", a love song about keeping half an apple spare for a loved one who is gone. The song was released on 5 March 2007, on the album Ballads of the Book.[4]
In 2008, Smith contributed the short story "Writ" to an anthology supporting Save the Children. The anthology is entitled The Children's Hours and was published by Arcadia Books. Foreign editions have been published in Portugal, Italy, China and Korea.[46]
In 2011 she wrote a short memoir for The Observer in their "Once upon a life" series: "Looking back on her life, writer Ali Smith returns to the moment of conception to weave a poignant and funny memoir of an irreverent father, a weakness for Greek musicals and a fateful border crossing."[47]
In October 2011, Smith published The Story of Antigone, a retelling of the classic created by Sophocles. It is part of the "Save the stories" series by Pushkin Children’s Books and is illustrated by Laura Paoletti.[48]
In October 2012, Smith read a sermon at Manchester Cathedral to guests and students, followed by a book signing.[49]
In 2013, Smith published Artful, a book based on her lectures on European comparative literature delivered the previous year at St Anne's College, Oxford. Artful was well-received, with one reviewer commenting that, "...her new book, in which she tugs at God’s sleeve, ruminates on clowns, shoplifts used books, dabbles in Greek and palavers with the dead, is a stunner."[50]
Smith is also a patron of the Visual Verse online anthology and her piece "Untitled", written in response to an image by artist Rupert Jessop, appears in the November 2014 edition.[52]
In 2011, she contributed the short story "Scots Pine (A Valediction Forbidding Mourning)" to Why Willows Weep, an anthology supporting The Woodland Trust. The paperback edition was released in 2016.[54]
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