Ali Smith

Ali Smith was born in Inverness, studied at the University of Aberdeen and taught at the University of Strathclyde.

In 1995, Smith 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.

Since then, she has continued to write passionate, compassionate and inventive novels, short stories, plays, and non-fiction. Smith was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction, and won the 2005 Whitbread Novel of the Year award for The Accidental.

In 2014, How To Be Both was awarded the Goldsmiths Prize, Bailey’s Prize and the Costa Book Awards’ Novel Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Smith has also written articles for The Guardian, The Scotsman, New Statesman and the Times Literary Supplement.