zadie smith

  • The Book You’re Writing

    In the latest installment of Little, Brown’s “Ask a Debut Novelist,” Ted Thompson addresses the anxieties that spring eternal from the minds of new writers, perfectionism and the specter of Zadie Smith’s superior talent among them. While quality is certainly a…

  • The Writer’s Writer

    Karl Ove Knausgaard, the handsome Norwegian writer, is traveling through the U.S. giving talks and readings and interviews. It’s as good a time as any to start reading his 6-part autobiography, My Struggle, especially if you are a writer. As…

  • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Zadie Smith Crack Each Other Up

    Two weeks ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Zadie Smith sat down at the Schomburg Center to chat about Adichie’s glorious novel, Americanah (and literature, race, gender, and love!). Their conversation was smart and incisive, with a lot of laughing—but if you missed…

  • Notable NYC: 11/9–11/15

    Saturday 11/9: The Comic Arts Festival features guest speakers, indie publishers, and self-published comic zines. Mt. Carmel Church -and- The Knitting Factory, 11am to 7pm, free. Colum McCann reads from his novel Transatlantic (June 2013), presented by Community Bookstore. Brooklyn…

  • Notable San Francisco: 10/28–11/3

    Monday 10/28: The “On Arts” series, benefiting the 826 Valencia Scholarship Program, presents British author Zadie Smith in conversation with Steve Winn. $27, 7:30pm at Nourse Theater. Tuesday 10/29: The Moth comes to The Booksmith, featuring an opening story from…

  • Writers’ Roaring Twenties

    What were/are you doing in your twenties? If you’re F. Scott Fitzgerald or Zadie Smith, you were publishing groundbreaking novels. If you’re Jack London, you were losing teeth from scurvy in Alaska, which, you know, good for him. See what…

  • “It’s a broad church that way”

    In one brief quote, the contradictions and joys of literature as a mirror. Andrew Sullivan cites our interview with the eloquent Zadie Smith.

  • The Rumpus Interview with Zadie Smith

    The Rumpus Interview with Zadie Smith

    For our first interview of 2013, we sit down with the incomparable Zadie Smith for a thoughtful chat about identity, the pleasure of reading, and how to write honestly about the state of humanity.

  • I Like My Oatmeal Lumpy, or How I Came To Rap The Humpty Dance in front of New York’s Literary Elite

    I Like My Oatmeal Lumpy, or How I Came To Rap The Humpty Dance in front of New York’s Literary Elite

    On an unseasonably warm day in October, I was invited to participate in The Happy Ending Reading and Music Series

  • NW by Zadie Smith

    NW by Zadie Smith

    The fat sun stalls by the phone masts. This is how Zadie Smith opens her latest novel, NW, and how appropriate–that something so fiery and core-hot, so screaming and universal could appear dumbfounded, loafing, stagnant. Meet North West London, a…

  • FURTHER GLIMPSES INTO ZADIE SMITH’S NEW NOVEL

    “Pencil leaves no mark on magazine pages. Somewhere she has read that the gloss gives you cancer. Everyone knows it shouldn’t be this hot. Shrivelled blossom and bitter little apples. Birds singing the wrong tunes in the wrong trees too…

  • A PEEK INSIDE ZADIE SMITH’S NEW NOVEL

    The Millions has excerpted the first lines of Zadie Smith’s forthcoming novel NW. Set in northwest London, this book is Smith’s first novel since the publication of On Beauty in 2005. NW will be released this September.