Results tagged “zadiesmith”

It's time for the LAIST prize roundup in the book world. John Banville, in a surprise turn, has won the Booker Prize for his novel, The Sea, beating out favorite Julian Barnes, Kazuo Ishiguro, Zadie Smith, Sebastian Barry, and Ali Smith. Apparently the voting was as close as it's ever been. There's a great 3-part interview with Banville at the litblog The Elegant Variation.

There's always more gossip than content going around the Internet about author Zadie Smith, whether it's Vogue mis-identifying someone else as her in a photo (the insulting inaccuracy was ridiculed via Maud and the Old Hag) or the Rake raking up her rap preferences. Smith has something that stands above the gossip, though - one of the best writing talents in generations, and now another book to prove it.

It's confession time here in Booksville, LAIST. Zadie Smith, author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man and her most recent, On Beauty, will be appearing not once, but twice, this Sunday in Los Angeles: at Dutton's Beverly Hills at 2 pm, and at 826 LA at 6. We have known this for almost a month (we posted about her Booker Prize nomination here) and tried to write a post about it for that length of time. And we have, thus far, failed. The book is too good, and the multiplicity of themes too overwhelming.

Zadie Smith, author of , is on a roll this September, and it's bringing her back to SoCal. Not only is she going to be in Los Angeles for An Evening with Zadie Smith at 826 LA on October 2nd (details coming to you as soon as we get them), not only is her third book, On Beauty, coming out September 13th, she's on the Booker Prize shortlist. She's unlikely to win - Julian Barnes is leading the field with the bookies - but the recognition is well deserved.

Kevin Smokler is a book man. He writes about contemporary literature all over the place and talks about it on NPR. He consults and lectures across the country about what we read and how and last year, when the NEA announced that reading was in decline, he got a little sad and then he got a little mad. He had run a very popular site about books and had created virtual book tours that were wildly successful. He read a bunch of sites that were very popular that talked lit and he knew young authors like David Sedaris, Nick Hornby, and Zadie Smith that could pack houses with young people that wanted to talk about their words. From there, his first book, Bookmark Now, was born. It is a collection of essays about writing and reading in our "unreaderly times." We got a chance to IM with Kevin during his own Virtual Book Tour about the written word in a multimedia world.