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Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith, English novelist and Royal Society of Literature fellow, will speak as part of the Tolles Lecture series on Wednesday, Oct. 21, at 8 p.m., in the Chapel. The lecture is free and open to the public. It will be followed by a book-signing and reception in Dwight Lounge, Bristol Center.

Smith’s acclaimed first novel, White Teeth, is a vibrant portrait of contemporary multicultural London, told through the story of three ethnically diverse families. The novel won the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and two BT Ethnic and Multicultural Media Awards. White Teeth was also adapted for television in 2002 by Channel 4 and has been translated into over 20 languages. Smith served as writer-in-residence at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and subsequently published as editor an anthology of sex writing, Piece of Flesh (ICA, 1999), as the culmination of this role.

Smith’s second novel, The Autograph Man, a story of loss, obsession and the nature of celebrity, won the 2003 Jewish Quarterly Prize for Fiction. In 2003 and 2013 Smith was named by Granta as one of 20 best young British authors. The second novel was followed by another, On Beauty, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.

Smith is currently a tenured professor of creative writing at New York University.

The Tolles Lecture was established in 1991 by members of the class of 1951 in memory of Winton Tolles, class of 1928 and dean of the college from 1947 to 1972. It brings to the Hamilton campus distinguished writers in the fields of literature, journalism and theater to lecture and meet with students.

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