Ali Smith

Ali Smith CBE FRSL (born 24 August 1962) is a Scottish author, playwright, academic and journalist. Sebastian Barry described her in 2016¹ as "Scotland's Nobel laureate-in-waiting." Smith released two, homophone novels in successive years, Gliff in 2024¹ followed by Glyph in 2026, which deal with contemporary social dilemmas and political topics.

Ali Smith CBE FRSL (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." Smith released two, homophone novels in successive years, Gliff in 2024 followed by Glyph in 2026, which deal with contemporary social dilemmas and political topics.

Early life and education

Smith was born in Inverness on 24 August 1962 to Ann and Donald Smith. Her parents were working-class and she was raised in a council house in Inverness. From 1967 to 1974 she attended St. Joseph's RC Primary School, then went to Inverness High School, leaving in 1980. She pursued 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. She won the university's Bobby Aitken Memorial Prize for Poetry in 1984. 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. Smith moved to Edinburgh from Cambridge in 1990 and worked as a lecturer in Scottish, English and American literature at the University of Strathclyde. She left the university in 1992 because she was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome. She returned to Cambridge to recuperate. As a young woman, Smith held several part-time jobs including waitress, lettuce-cleaner, tourist board assistant, receptionist at BBC Highland and advertising copywriter.

Career

While studying for a PhD at Cambridge, Smith wrote several plays which were staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Cambridge Footlights. After some time working in Scotland, she returned to Cambridge to concentrate on her writing, focussing on short stories and freelancing as the fiction reviewer for The Scotsman. In 1995, she published her first book, Free Love and Other Stories, a collection of 12 short stories which won the Saltire First Book of the Year award and Scottish Arts Council Book Award. She writes articles for The Guardian, The Scotsman, New Statesman and The Times Literary Supplement. 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. In 2008, Smith produced The Book Lover, a collection of her favourite writing, including pieces from Sylvia Plath, Muriel Spark, Grace Paley, Margaret Atwood, Joseph Roth and Clarice Lispector. 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. 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. In 2011 she wrote a short memoir for The Observer in their "Once upon a life" series. In October of that year, Smith published The Story of Antigone, a retelling of the classic by Sophocles. It is part of the "Save the stories" series by Pushkin Children's Books and is illustrated by Laura Paoletti. In October 2012, Smith read a sermon at Manchester Cathedral to guests and students, followed by a book signing. 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." On 14 May 2013, Smith gave the National Centre for Writing's inaugural Harriet Martineau lecture, in celebration of Norwich, UNESCO's 2012 City of Literature. Smith is also a patron of the Visual Verse online anthology. Her piece "Untitled", written in response to an image by artist Rupert Jessop, appears in the November 2014 edition. 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. Smith is also patron of Refugee Tales. In 2016, Smith's story "The Detainee's Tale" was published by Comma Press in Refugee Tales Volume 1. In May 2021, Smith contributed a short story entitled "The final frontier" to The European Review of Books.

Literary awards

Works

Novels

Like (1997) Hotel World (2001) The Accidental (2005) Girl Meets Boy (2007) There But For The (2011) Artful (2012) How to Be Both (2014) Autumn (2016) Winter (2017) Spring (2019) Summer (2020) Companion Piece (2022) Gliff (2024) Glyph (2026)

Short story collections

Free Love and Other Stories (1995), awarded the Saltire First Book of the Year award and Scottish Arts Council Book Award Other Stories and Other Stories (1999) The Whole Story and Other Stories (2003) The First Person and Other Stories (2008) Public Library and Other Stories (2015)

Plays

Stalemate (1986), unpublished, produced at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe The Dance (1988), unpublished, produced at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Trace of Arc (1989), produced at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Daughters of England (1989–1990), unpublished, Cambridge Footlights Amazons (1990), Cambridge Footlights Comic (1990), unpublished, produced at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe The Seer (2001) Just (2005)

Other

Shire (2013), with images by Sarah Wood, short stories and autobiographical writing, Full Circle Editions

References

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1378461283 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.