Portrait of Zadie Smith by Nadav Kander (based on a photograph © Dominique Nabokov). Smith was unable to attend the shoot due to pregnancy.
Zadie Smith on ‘Just Right’
Zadie Smith
‘There should be a special term for abandoned stories, and another for the strange limbo in which their occupants live.’
Granta 166: Generations Online
Generation Gap
‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
Generation Gap
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
Generation Gap
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
Generation Gap
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
Generation Gap
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW and Swing Time, as well as a novella, The Embassy of Cambodia, two collections of essays, Changing My Mind and Feel Free and the collection of short fiction Grand Union. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People. Zadie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002, and was listed as one of Granta’s 20 Best Young British Novelists in 2003 and again in 2013. Zadie Smith is currently a tenured professor of fiction at New York University and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Photograph © Dominique Nabokov