Ali Smith


1962 -

Author and playwright. Born into modest circumstances in Inverness, the youngest of five children, Smith was educated at Inverness High School, the University of Aberdeen and Newnham College, Cambridge.

Her first book, Free Love and Other Stories (1995), won the Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award. She has gone on to publish several other collections of short stories, together with a number of novels. Her first novel, Like (1997), received critical acclaim and this was followed by Hotel World (2001), which gained the Encore Award and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award. The Accidental (2005) won the Whitbread Novel of the Year award. Several of her novels have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her plays include The Seer (2001) and Just (2005).

Smith was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Aberdeen (2007), a CBE in 2015 and appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs the following year. She now lives in Cambridge.


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