Distinguished Speaker Zadie Smith

This dialogue, featuring Zadie Smith in conversation with Ruben Espinosa, interrogated the ways we teach and write about English literature. In what ways can we adapt and appropriate the canon to imagine different and more inclusive futures?

Novelist 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 acclaimed 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), and two BT Ethnic and Multicultural Media Awards (Best Book/Novel and Best Female Media Newcomer).

Her novel Swing Time was a New York Times bestseller. She has published three collections of essays, Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays (2009), Feel Free (2018) and Intimations which was chosen as one of Oprah’s Best Books of 2020. Her collection of short stories, Grand Union, was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal. Her play, The Wife of Willesden, based on Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Tale will premiere at the Kiln Theatre. In 2021 she co-wrote a children’s book with Nick Laird titled Weirdo, with illustrations by Magenta Fox. She is currently working on a new novel.

About ACMRS:
The Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS) was established in 1981 by the Arizona Board of Regents as a state-wide, tri-university research unit that bridges the intellectual communities at Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, and the University of Arizona. Located centrally on the campus of Arizona State University, ACMRS is charged with coordinating and stimulating interdisciplinary research about medieval and early modern literature and culture.

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