Ali Smith is one of the most outstanding Scottish contemporary writers, named by Sebastian Barry as "Scotland’s Nobel laureate-in-waiting" (Barry 2016). She was born in Inverness in 1962; her parents were working class and she grew up in a large family with five siblings. Smith describes her childhood as "happy and secure" (Denes 2003) and remembers her "sheer joy" and "immense delight" in writing one of her first poems around the age of seven or eight (qtd. in Young 2015, 134). The discovery of her talent for rhyme sparked her interest in literature at an early age and her determination to be a poet.
Her success on the literary scene is illustrated by the numerous literary prizes she has received and the importance of her work is sustained by an increasing academic interest and
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Citation: Farkas, Zita. "Ali Smith". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 September 2017 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5821, accessed 03 December 2023.]
