over the evergreen summer meadow

ALI SMITH is an award-winning novelist and short-story writer. Now based in Cambridge, she was born in Inverness in 1962, and attended Inverness High School and the University of Aberdeen before moving to Cambridge as a graduate student, although she admits she found herself concentrating more on the social and cultural ferment of the city than on her PhD on American and Irish Modernism.
Her first book, Free Love and Other Stories (1995), won the Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award and a Scottish Arts Council Award. Her first novel, Like, was published to critical acclaim in 1997. Set in Scotland and Cambridge, the book tells the story of an enduring childhood friendship.
A second collection, the enigmatically titled Other Stories and Other Stories, was published in 1999. Her second novel, Hotel World (2001), won the Encore Award, a Scottish Arts Council Book Award, and the inaugural Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award. It was also short listed for both the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Booker Prize for Fiction.

Set during the course of one night, the narrative follows the adventures of five different characters, one of whom is the ghost of a chambermaid killed in a bizarre accident.

Her most recent collection of short stories is The Whole Story and Other Stories (2003) and her latest novel is The Accidental (2004), which won the 2005 Whitbread Novel Award. The book has also been short-listed for the Orange Prize 2006, to be announced in June.