Ali Smith

Scottish author and journalist (born 1962)

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 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 on to Inverness High School, leaving in 1980. She studied 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. 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 writes articles for The Guardian, The Scotsman, New Statesman and The Times Literary Supplement. 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.

Smith lives in Cambridge with her partner, filmmaker Sarah Wood.

In 2007, Smith was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to literature. An honorary doctorate (D. Litt) was awarded to her by Newcastle University in 2019. In 2024 she was awarded the Bodley Medal for contributions to literature, the highest honour of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.