Ali Smith is the author of many works of fiction, including, most recently, Summer, Spring, Winter, Autumn, Public library and other stories, and How to be both, which won the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize, and the Costa Novel of the Year Award. Her latest work Companion Piece was published in 2023.

Her work has four times been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Born in Inverness, Scotland, she lives in Cambridge, England.

How to be Both

by Ali Smith

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The world asks us to be quickly readable, but the thing about human beings is that we are more than one thing. We are multiple selves. We are massively contradictory.

Ali Smith