ALI SMITH was born in Inverness in 1962 and lives in Cambridge. She is the author of Free Love and Other Stories; Like; Other Stories And Other Stories; Hotel World, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize; The Whole Stories and Other Stories; The Accidental, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Orange Prize; Girl Meets Boy; The First Person and Other Stories; There but for the; Artful; How to be both, which won the Baileys Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Folio Prize; and Public library and other stories, which was published in 2015. Her next novel is forthcoming in 2016.
KASIA BODDY is a senior lecturer in English at UCL. She is the author of Boxing: A Cultural History (2008) and co-editor (with Ali Smith & Sarah Wood) of Brilliant Careers: The Virago Book of Twentieth-Century Fiction (2000); she has contributed an introduction to the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
SARAH WOOD is an artist, filmmaker and film curator.