Toronto 
Events Description
Zadie Smith is one of Britain’s most celebrated contemporary writers, penning era-defining titles like White Teeth and On Beauty that have delighted and intrigued readers for decades.
Zadie will join us to discuss not only her most renowned, bestselling novels but also her latest book of essays, Dead and Alive.
Dead and Alive focuses Smith’s dazzling skills on the subjects that have recently captured her attention. From literary memorials for writers we’ve lost, to trips to the movies, Glastonbury and Kilburn High Road, this is a collection about everything that makes life fizz – love, loss, culture and politics. Comprising 32 essays, 12 of them previously unpublished. Throughout this thrilling collection, Zadie Smith shows us once again her unrivaled ability to think through, critically and humanely, some of the most urgent preoccupations and tendencies of our troubled times.
Novelist Zadie Smith was born in North London in 1975 to an English father and a Jamaican mother. She read English at Cambridge, before graduating in 1997.
Her acclaimed first novel, White Teeth, is a vibrant portrait of contemporary multicultural London, told through the stories of three ethnically diverse families. The book won a number of awards and prizes, including the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize. White Teeth has been translated into over twenty languages and was adapted for both television and the stage. In 2020 the New York Public Library voted White Teeth one of the 125 most important books of the last 125 years. It is also one of the New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. A 25th anniversary edition with a new forward by Smith was published in 2025.
Smith has published several collections of essays, Changing My Mind, Feel Free, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, and Intimations which was chosen as one of Oprah’s Best Books of 2020. Her new collection of essays is titled Dead and Alive (Penguin Random House, October 28, 2025). Kirkus called it “A thoughtful, deft collection.”
Zadie Smith writes regularly for the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. She has received many honors including the City College of New York’s Langston Hughes Medal, the St. Louis Literary Award, the PEN/Audible Literary Service Award, and the Bodley Medal. She is a member of the Royal Society of Literature, a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Zadie Smith lives in London.
Who is it for?
All ages
HOW MUCH
Tickets : $64.70 – $137.00
How to get tickets?
Phone: 416-872-4255
Email: contactus@mh-rth.com
WHEN & WHERE
Date: Sunday October 18, 2026 | 6:00 PM
Venue & Address
Massey Hall, 178 Victoria Street, Toronto, ON M5B 1T7
Wheelchair accessible
Paid Parking
Accessible by Public Transport
