Ali Smith: The Writer's Art

With the completion of her Seasonal Quartet novels and the accompanying Companion Piece, Ali Smith underlined her striking ability to portray personal encounters and relationships alongside the limpid portrayal of a fast-changing British society. The novels are simultaneously rooted in contemporary life and flights of pure imagination. As the Book Festival celebrates its 40th anniversary, Smith looks back over key events in her life as a writer, exploring the ways they sparked her fiction with Sarah Wood.

Categories: Fiction, Words/Reading, Writing/Publishing

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What Makes a Writer

To mark the Book Festival’s 40th year, we have invited five leading writers to join us in a series that explores that most creative and consuming of vocations: the writing life. In this series, Jackie Kay, Val McDermid, Elif Shafak, Bernardine Evaristo, and Ali Smith cast their minds back over their careers and reflect on some of the key moments and influences that have defined them as writers. What compels them to keep going despite the inherent difficulties of the task?…