Zadie Smith was born in North London in 1975 to an English father and a Jamaican mother. She read English at Cambridge, before graduating in 1997. Her much-praised first novel, White Teeth (2000), is a vibrant portrait of contemporary multicultural London, told through the stories of three ethnically diverse families. The book won a number of awards and prizes, including the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book). White Teeth has been translated into over twenty languages.

On Beauty was published in 2005, and won the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction. Smith has also written a non-fiction book about writing: Fail Better (2006). Her most recent non-fiction book is Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays (2009). Her latest novel, entitled NW, was published in September 2012. Zadie Smith is currently a tenured professor of Creative Writing at New York University.

This event is free and open to the public. Sponsored by the Department of English Literature.