How to Be Both by Ali Smith
Ali Smith was born August 1962 in Inverness, Scotland. She was born to working-class parents, raised in a council house in Inverness and now lives in Cambridge. She studied at the University of Aberdeen and then at Newnham College, Cambridge, for a PhD that she never finished. She worked as a lecturer at University of Strathclyde until she fell ill with CFS/ME. Following this she became a full-time writer and now writes for The Guardian, The Scotsman, and the Times Literary Supplement. Openly gay, she lives in Cambridge with her partner filmmaker Sarah Wood.
In 2007 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
In 2009, she donated the short story "Last" (previously published in the Manchester Review Online) to Oxfam's "Ox-Tales" project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the Fire collection.
Smith was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to literature.
This is the only YouTube video I could find where Ali Smith talks at all about How to Be Both. It was produced for the 2014 Costa Book Awards for which How to Be Both won in the Novel category.
Ali Smith has written an article in The Guardian, "He looked like the finest man who ever lived," in which she discusses in more depth how Francesco del Cossa's image of March in the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoia served as a jumping-off place for How to Be Both.
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| The figure of March from the Palazzo Schifanoia |
Painting in Fresco
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| The full March panel from Schifanoia |
Painting in Tempera on Wood
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| Del Cossa's St. Lucy from the National Gallery in London |
Musical Accompaniment from Sylvie Vartan
This is the French singer from the 1960s who so intrigued George and H.
