Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962 and went on to study at the University of Aberdeen, and then Newnham College, Cambridge. She taught at the University of Strathclyde before becoming a full-time writer. She has received much critical acclaim for her work: Smith’s first publication, a short story collection entitled Free Love and Other Stories (1995), won the Saltire First Book of the Year Award; her 2001 novel, Hotel World, was shortlisted for both the Booker Prize for Fiction and the Orange Prize for Fiction; and her third novel, The Accidental, won the 2005 Whitbread Novel Award. She now writes for the Guardian, the Scotsman and the Times Literary Supplement.