Zadie Smith

Known as Sadie until an act of teenage rebellion (it stuck), the British writer Zadie Smith grew up in the borough of Brent, an area of North West London consistently referenced throughout her work. She studied English at Cambridge university, where she completed her acclaimed debut, White Teeth, in 1999, at the age of 21. As well as novels, Zadie also contributes nonfiction pieces to titles such as The New Yorker and the Paris Review. Mother to daughter Kit and son Harvey, she now resides in New York, where she is a Professor of Creative Writing at NYU. She remains an enthusiastic consumer of hip-hop.