Ali Smith, photographed in Milan, Italy, in July 2018.

(Leonardo Cendamo / Getty Images)

How Ali Smith wrote a fast, newsy, transcendent book series during the darkest of timelines

BY LAUREN LEBLANC

AUG. 12, 2020 7 AM PT

If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.

The excuses for not writing novels about headline news are both convenient and entirely valid. Fiction inspired by very recent events doesn’t afford enough distance to register their true impact, while the process of publishing it creates too much distance: a chaotic nanosecond-long news cycle makes a mockery of the standard publication schedule.

Why it’s great to be alive at the same time as author Ali Smith

 

Scottish writer Ali Smith in Milan.
Photo by

Leonardo Cendamo 

Review: Why it’s great to be alive at the same time as author Ali Smith

BY LAUREN LEBLANC

MAY 5, 2022 6 AM PT

It is remarkable to be alive at the same time as Scottish writer Ali Smith. No one else, I would argue, captures our ongoing contemporary nightmare in a manner that is both expansively imaginative and the perfect mirror of its abrupt absurdity. After five years of writing and publishing her seasonal quartet — an experiment in real-time fiction, both news-driven and profoundly thoughtful — Smith could be forgiven for taking a pause.