Little known facts about best-selling author Zadie Smith

25th October 2019

Sadie Smith was born in Willesden, north-west London, on October 25, 1975. Her mother, Yvonne Bailey, is Jamaican and her father, Harvey Smith, English.

Sadie changed her name to Zadie when she was 14. As a child she loved tap dancing and thought about a career in musical theatre. While studying English Literature at King’s College, Cambridge, Zadie paid some bills by being a jazz singer, and wanted to become a journalist.

But she bypassed all other options to become a full-time writer as soon as she left University. In fact, her debut novel – White Teeth – was completed in her final year at Cambridge, and had already attracted attention from the publishing world. White Teeth, published in 2000, was a best-seller, won awards and was adapted into a memorable TV series in 2002.

Zadie Smith had arrived in the literary world like a meteor crashing to earth.

After suffering briefly from fame-induced writer’s block, The Autograph Man was published in 2002 but was more successful commercially than critically.

Zadie has largely lived and taught in the USA since then, at Harvard University, Columbia University and, since 2010, as a tenured Professor of Fiction at New York University. On Beauty was published in 2005, set in and around Boston, won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2006 and garnered her first Man Booker Prize nomination, and a place on the shortlist.

Between other writing projects, novels NW (2012) and Swing Time (2016) and her first published short story collection Grand Union (2019), have received both critical and popular acclaim.

Away from the literary spotlight, Zadie met Nick Laird at Cambridge University and married him in 2004 in the King’s College Chapel. They have two children and currently split their time between homes in New York City and London.

Zadie is close friends with Lena Dunham, both sharing the experience of being caught in the dazzling lights of literary stardom while still firmly attached to their youth.

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