艾莉·史密斯

艾莉·史密斯（Ali Smith，1962年8月24日—），苏格兰作家。

生平

艾莉·史密斯双亲是工人阶级，定居于剑桥 。

2007年，艾莉·史密斯成为苏格兰皇家文学学会成员。

著作

《Like》 (1997)

《饭店世界》（ Hotel World）（2001）

《迷》（The Accidental） (2005)

《Girl Meets Boy》 (2007)

《How to be both》

《纵横交错的世界》（There But For The）(2011)

Ali Smith CBE FRSL (born 24 August 1962) is a Scottish author, playwright, academic and journalist. Sebastian Barry described her in 2016 as "Scotland's Nobel laureate-in-waiting." Smith released two, homophone novels in successive years, Gliff in 2024 followed by Glyph in 2026, which deal with contemporary social dilemmas and political topics.

Early life and education

Smith was born in Inverness on 24 August 1962 to Ann and Donald Smith. Her parents were working-class and she was raised in a council house in Inverness. From 1967 to 1974 she attended St. Joseph's RC Primary School, then went to Inverness High School, leaving in 1980.

She pursued a joint degree in English language and literature at the University of Aberdeen from 1980 to 1985, coming first in her class in 1982 and gaining a top first in Senior Honours English in 1984. She won the university's Bobby Aitken Memorial Prize for Poetry in 1984.

From 1985 to 1990 she attended Newnham College, Cambridge, studying for a PhD in American and Irish modernism. During her time at Cambridge, she began writing plays and as a result, did not complete her doctorate.

Smith moved to Edinburgh from Cambridge in 1990 and worked as a lecturer in Scottish, English and American literature at the University of Strathclyde. She left the university in 1992 because she was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome. She returned to Cambridge to recuperate.

As a young woman, Smith held several part-time jobs including waitress, lettuce-cleaner, tourist board assistant, receptionist at BBC Highland and advertising copywriter.

Career

While studying for a PhD at Cambridge, Smith wrote several plays which were staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Cambridge Footlights. After some time working in Scotland, she returned to Cambridge to concentrate on her writing, focussing on short stories and freelancing as the fiction reviewer for The Scotsman. In 1995, she 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.

She writes articles for The Guardian, The Scotsman, New Statesman and The Times Literary Supplement.

Smith partnered with the Scottish band Trashcan Sinatras and wrote the lyrics to a song called "Half An Apple", a love song about keeping half an apple spare for a loved one who is gone. The song was released on 5 March 2007, on the album Ballads of the Book.

In 2008, Smith produced The Book Lover, a collection of her favourite writing, including pieces from Sylvia Plath, Muriel Spark, Grace Paley, Margaret Atwood, Joseph Roth and Clarice Lispector. Smith contributed the short story "Writ" to an anthology supporting Save the Children. The anthology is entitled The Children's Hours and was published by Arcadia Books. Foreign editions have been published in Portugal, Italy, China and Korea.

In 2009, she donated the short story "Last" (previously published in the Manchester Review online) to Oxfam's Ox-Tales project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the Fire collection.

In 2011 she wrote a short memoir for The Observer in their "Once upon a life" series. In October of that year, Smith published The Story of Antigone, a retelling of the classic by Sophocles. It is part of the "Save the stories" series by Pushkin Children's Books and is illustrated by Laura Paoletti.

In October 2012, Smith read a sermon at Manchester Cathedral to guests and students, followed by a book signing.