Zadie Smith was born in northwest London in 1975 and still lives in the area. She is the author of White Teeth which won the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Guardian First Book Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and the Commonwealth Writers' First Book Award; The Autograph Man, which won the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize; and On Beauty, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the Orange Prize for Fiction and a Commonwealth Writers' Best Book Award. She is also the author of the essay collection Changing My Mind.