Most Popular Books by Ali Smith

This story of three men''s work helping traumatized kids in one of America’s most underserved cities reveals how mindfulness tools can help children and communities not only survive but thrive In this inspiring book, founders of The Holistic Life Foundation Ali Smith, Atman Smith, and Andres Gonzalez describe how they have spent the past twenty years teaching yoga, meditation, and breathwork to thousands of at-risk kids in Baltimore schools helping them to develop deep reserves of patience, empathy, resolve, and—when needed—the righteous anger that fuels deep structural change. Their work has received wide national attention due to their remarkable results: The schools that have participated in their programs have seen suspension rates plummet and graduation rates go through the roof. Ali and Atman discovered as young children the power of mindfulness practices to sustain them through the challenges of growing up in a neighborhood in Baltimore that was struggling with poverty and violence—a community they now serve. The Holistic Life Foundation’s mission is to empower kids to find this same stillness and light within themselves and to let it shine out to help change the world. In this book, Ali, Atman and Andres share hands-on mindfulness and meditation tools readers can teach kids that will empower them to do this same work in their own communities. Let Your Light Shine is essential reading for parents, educators, activists, and anyone looking to make a difference in the lives of young people.

Ali Smith''s "beautifully written, precise, poetic" (The Observer) debut that follows the briefly intertwined lives of two young women When we meet Amy Shone, she is a young parent struggling to raise Kate, a precocious eight-year-old. Amy is an enigma-a brilliant scholar who has forgotten how to read. She is estranged from her wealthy English parents and lives a nomadic life in Scotland, dragging Kate from one school to the next, barely scraping by. And then there is Ash, a fiery Scottish actresss who cannot shake her demons-chief among them an unrequited passion for Amy that has obsessed her ever since they met as teenagers. Like is the story of two parallel lives that intersect briefly, then diverge. It is also a timeless evocation of adolescence and its agonizing anticipations, its contradictory yearnings for freedom and safety, its blind quest for mastery over pleasure and pain. Deftly constructed, passionately imagined, Like is a remarkable debut from a powerful talent.

''Wonderful ... all killer, no filler'' Red Magazine ''Dazzling stories, as inventive as they are inspiring'' Daily Mirror ''Where power and feminist rage meet'' Stylist ______________________________ A fun and fearless anthology of feminist tales, by fifteen bestselling, award-winning writers: Margaret Atwood, Susie Boyt, Eleanor Crewes, Emma Donoghue, Stella Duffy, Linda Grant, Claire Kohda, CN Lester, Kirsty Logan, Caroline O''Donoghue, Chibundu Onuzo, Helen Oyeyemi, Rachel Seiffert, Kamila Shamsie and Ali Smith - introduced by Sandi Toksvig. DRAGON. TYGRESS. SHE-DEVIL. HUSSY. SIREN. WENCH. HARRIDAN. MUCKRAKER. SPITFIRE. VITUPERATOR. CHURAIL. TERMAGANT. FURY. WARRIOR. VIRAGO. For centuries past, and all across the world, there are words that have defined and decried us. Words that raise our hackles, fire up our blood; words that tell a story. In this blazing cauldron of a book, fifteen bestselling, award-winning writers have taken up their pens and reclaimed these words, creating an entertaining and irresistible collection of feminist tales for our time. ''A slick collection of clever tales, with something for bluestockings and banshees alike'' Guardian ''Delightful, thought-provoking'' Louisa Young, Perspectives

SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER A once-in-a-generation series, Ali Smith''s Seasonal Quartet is a tour-de-force about love, time, art, politics, and how we live now. ''Her best yet, a dazzling hymn to hope, uniting the past and present with a chorus of voices'' Observer What unites Katherine Mansfield, Charlie Chaplin, Shakespeare, Rilke, Beethoven, Brexit, the present, the past, the north, the south, the east, the west, a man mourning lost times, a woman trapped in modern times? Spring. The great connective. With an eye to the migrancy of story over time, and riffing on Pericles, one of Shakespeare''s most resistant and rollicking works, Ali Smith tells the impossible tale of an impossible time. In a time of walls and lockdown Smith opens the door. The time we''re living in is changing nature. Will it change the nature of story? Hope springs eternal. Discover all four instalments: Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer. Ali Smith''s new novel, Companion piece, is available now. ***** ''An astonishing accomplishment and a book for all seasons'' Independent ''Smith is a masterful storyteller . . . Savour it'' Evening Standard ''Infectious in its energy and warmth'' Daily Telegraph

In einem alten Hotel in einer schottischen Stadt treffen fünf sehr unterschiedliche Frauen aufeinander: die Journalistin Penny, die im Hotel übernachtet, die warmherzige Rezeptionistin Lise, die Obdachlose Else, die vor dem Hotel bettelt, und die junge Clare, die herausfinden will, was mit ihrer Schwester Sara wirklich passiert ist. Denn das fünfte weibliche Wesen, um das es hier geht, ist der Geist des Zimmermädchens Sara, das vor kurzem im Hotel verunglückt ist, und dieser Geist versucht starrsinnig, am Leben festzuhalten, was diese eine Nacht für alle fünf Frauen zu einer ganz besonderen macht ...

Libro d’esordio della talentuosissima autrice scozzese, Free Love è una raccolta che declina l’amore in una miriade di sfumature sentimentali e sensuali. Troviamo allora una teenager che perde la verginità durante un viaggio ad Amsterdam tra le braccia di una prostituta; la giovane donna che per amore della letteratura lascia al vento le pagine della sua biblioteca; i ricordi di un’ardente passione evocati da un timido fotografo; la descrizione di un’attrazione struggente, non corrisposta, che si consuma mentre scorrono sullo schermo fotogrammi dei film più celebri della storia del cinema... E così molti altri racconti che evocano il desiderio, la memoria, l’ambiguità sessuale e l’immaginazione di quel sentimento, tenero o impetuoso, per l’oggetto amato. Ali Smith ci mostra come le cose si attraggano e come si separino, come l’amore sia sempre amore, a prescindere dall’età, dal sesso o dall’ambiente nel quale vive il protagonista, perché tutti hanno il loro momento di follia.“Una raccolta dolcemente memorabile... Un talento eccezionale.” “The Times”

A once-in-a-generation series, Ali Smith''s Seasonal Quartet is a tour-de-force about love, time, art, politics, and how we live now. Winter? Bleak. Frosty wind, earth as iron, water as stone, so the old song goes. The shortest days, the longest nights. The trees are bare and shivering. The summer''s leaves? Dead litter. The world shrinks; the sap sinks. But winter makes things visible. And if there''s ice, there''ll be fire. In Ali Smith''s Winter, lifeforce matches up to the toughest of the seasons. In this second novel in her acclaimed Seasonal cycle, the follow-up to her sensational Autumn, Smith casts a merry eye over a bleak post-truth era with a story rooted in history, memory and warmth, its taproot deep in the evergreens: art, love, laughter. It''s the season that teaches us survival. Here comes Winter. Discover all four instalments: Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer. Ali Smith''s new novel, Companion piece, is available to pre-order now. ***** ''Dazzling . . . Even in the bleak midwinter, Smith is evergreen'' Daily Telegraph ''Graceful, mischievous, joyful . . . Infused with some much-needed humour, happiness and hope'' Independent ''A novel of great ferocity, tenderness and generosity of spirit . . . Luminously beautiful'' Observer

FOREWORD BY ALI SMITH WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY FRANCESCA WADE Who better to serve as a guide to great books and their authors than Virginia Woolf? In the early years of its existence, the Times Literary Supplement published some of the finest writers in English: T. S. Eliot, Henry James and E. M. Forster among them. But one of the paper''s defining voices was Virginia Woolf, who produced a string of superb essays between the two World Wars. The weirdness of Elizabethan plays, the pleasure of revisiting favourite novels, the supreme examples of Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Henry James, Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad: all are here, in anonymously published pieces, in which may be glimpsed the thinking behind Woolf''s works of fiction and the enquiring, feminist spirit of A Room of One''s Own. Here is Woolf the critical essayist, offering, at one moment, a playful hypothesis and, at another, a judgement laid down with the authority of a twentieth-century Dr Johnson. Here is Woolf working out precisely what''s great about Hardy, and how Elizabeth Barrett Browning made books a "substitute for living" because she was "forbidden to scamper on the grass". Above all, here is Virginia Woolf the reader, whose enthusiasm for great literature remains palpable and inspirational today.

A wide-ranging collection of reflective essays, to mark the centenary of the conflict that changed the world.In this collection of essays, ten leading writers from different countries consider the conflicts that have informed their own literary lives. 1914-Goodbye to All That borrows its title from Robert Graves''s "bitter leave-taking of England" in which he writes not only of the First World War but the questions it raised: how to live, how to live with each other, and how to write.Interpreting this title as broadly and ambiguously as Graves intended, these essays mark the War''s centenary by reinvigorating these questions. The book includes Elif Shafak on an inheritance of silence in Turkey, Ali Smith on lost voices in Scotland, Xiaolu Guo on the 100,000 Chinese sent to the Front, Daniel Kehlmann on hypnotism in Berlin, Colm Toibin on Lady Gregory losing her son fighting for Britain as she fought for an independent Ireland, Kamila Shamsie on reimagining Karachi, Erwin Mortier on occupied Belgium''s legacy of shame, NoViolet Bulawayo on Zimbabwe and clarity, Ales Steger on resisting history in Slovenia, and Jeanette Winterson on what art is for.Contributors include: ;Ali Smith - Scotland ;Ales Steger - Slovenia ;Jeanette Winterson - England ;Elif Shafak - Turkey ;NoViolet Bulawayo - Zimbabwe ;Colm Toibin - Ireland ;Xiaolu Guo - China ;Erwin Mortier - BelgiumKamila Shamsie - Pakistan ;Daniel Kehlmann - Germany

When cutting-edge portrait photographer and documentarian Ali Smith set out to explore contemporary motherhood, she was determined to capture not only its great joys but its conflicts, compromises, messiness, and unpredictable mix of emotions—and to allow a wide range of fascinating women to tell their stories in their own voices. The result is a cinematic blend of Smith’s bold photography and the enthralling words of real women caught in the midst of real life at its most intense. Among the mothers you’ll meet inMomma Loveare Oscar-nominated actress Amy Ryan, who talks about being a mother in image-obsessed Hollywood; rock musician Alyson Palmer, who has taken both of her children on tour for years for what she calls “road schooling”; and Deborah Kopaken Cogan, who traded her harrowing life as a war photographer for the challenges of motherhood—enduring criticism as a “quitter” from her colleagues and the media. They are just a few of Ali’s subjects, who come from a wide range of backgrounds and places but share a penchant for honest self-reflection. PerusingMomma Loveis like entering into an honest, gutsy conversation that women of all ages will want to join, whether they are just curious about motherhood; contemplating it in earnest, as the author was when she began her journey; or deep in the throes of it. It is also for fans of great documentary photography that sticks in the mind and heart forever.

Captain O is a pirate with a heart of gold. Read his adventures as he sails the seven seas, has adventures on land and sea and in space, often having to choose between making a friend or making a fortune. Captain O and the mermaid is the first book in a series of 20.

From the acclaimed, award-winning author comes a sparkling, surprising collection of the writing she loves best—and without which she would not have become a writer. The Book Lover is a treasure trove of what Ali Smith has loved over the course of her reading life, in her twenties, as a teenager, as a child. Full of pieces from amazing writers like Sylvia Plath, Muriel Spark, Grace Paley, and Margaret Atwood, it also has a wonderful selection of lesser-known authors like Joseph Roth, only just gaining proper status now, and Clarice Lispector, a Brazilian genius who''s far too underpublished. From surprising figures like Beryl the Peril, Billie Holliday, and Lee Miller to unusual selections from the most prominent writers in history, The Book Lover is an intimate, personal anthology that gives readers a glimpse of how writers develop their craft—by reading other writers.

Fusing Keatsian mists and mellow fruitfulness with the vitality, the immediacy and the colour-hit of Pop Art - via a bit of very contemporary skulduggery and skull-diggery - ''Autumn'' is a witty excavation of the present by the past. The novel is a stripped-branches take on popular culture, and a meditation, in a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, what harvest means.

Rachel Kneebone (born 1973, Oxfordshire) is a London-based artist internationally renowned for her porcelain sculptures that intricately fuse human, natural, and abstract forms in ways that are simultaneously serene and cacophonous, beautiful yet grotesque, otherworldly yet full of humanity. Exploring themes such as sexual desire, mortality, anguish, and despair, Kneebone''''s sculptures are contemporary visions of eternal truths, conveyed with endless imagination and impressive artistry in equal measure. Launched in anticipation of ''''399 Days'''', Kneebone''''s latest presentation at White Cube, London, in summer 2014, this publication features works of art and installation documentation from the artist''''s acclaimed solo exhibition at Brooklyn Museum in 2012, which included eight of the artist''''s works in dialogue with fifteen bronze sculptures by Auguste Rodin that she selected from the museum''''s collection. Curated by Catherine Morris, curator at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at Brooklyn Museum, the exhibition was Kneebone''''s debut museum show, highlighting the two artists'''' shared interest in the representation of mourning, ecstasy, death, and vitality in figurative sculpture as well as offering an illuminating comparison of the artists'''' materials and working processes. Featuring a foreword by Catherine Morris and a text by Ali Smith, the publication is lavishly illustrated by photographs of the works by Stephen White and installation photography by Jon Lowe. The centerpiece of the exhibition and a focal point of the publication is a work entitled ''''The Descent'''' (2008), which at the time of the Brooklyn Museum show was Kneebone''''s largest work to date. In part inspired by Dante''''s ''''Divine Comedy'''' and with engaging connections to Rodin''''s iconic set of bronze doors ''''The Gates of Hell'''' - itself inspired by Dante''''s ''''Inferno'''' - Kneebone''''s white porcelain sculpture depicts myriad small mutant figures standing in a circle on the rim of a strange orifice-like pit, as if staring into hell itself, teeming with wretched limbs on the slopes below. With references ranging from Bataille to Cormac McCarthy, this apocalyptic vision of humanity and its ungodly demise captures souls condemned to eternal damnation in a sculpture that is as affecting as it is unforgettable. Other sculptures by Kneebone included in the publication include ''''For Beauty''''s nothing but beginning of Terror we''''re still just able to bear'''' (2011), which takes the form of a two-tier configuration of human limbs, evocative of classical myths and a history of aberrations, metamorphoses, and carbon-based chimera; ''''Still Life Triptych'''' (2011), which presents the viewer with three tomb-like plinths enshrouded by mysterious spheres and various bodily appendages; and ''''Eyes that look close at wounds themselves are wounded'''' (2010), which renders a pitiable naked female form transmogrified through her evident anguish into an almost abstract pile of flesh, bones, and organs. Beautiful, disturbing, remarkable - the gleaming white porcelain surfaces of Kneebone''''s exquisite sculptures belie their dark, despairing iconography, unleashing an orgiastic nightmare of elegant depravity and classical desolation. ''''Am I the only person who sees past the dark, the classical desolation that critics like to see in Kneebone''''s work?'''' asks Ali Smith in her dynamic and thought-provoking text, which takes us from Apollo to Lacan on a mind-expanding journey that starts by skinning satyrs alive and ends by proclaiming the life force that can be found even in prehistory''''s primordial slime. Designed by Herman Lelie and Stefania Bonelli, this beautifully produced hardback publication - which contains over fifty color reproductions and has been developed with support from Brooklyn Museum - will undoubtedly leave many readers as intrigued and impressed as they are bemused and unsettled. Having undertaken a BA at UWE, Bristol, Rachel Kneebone graduated with an MA from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2004. She is represented by White Cube, London, with whom she has had a number of solo exhibitions, and has also taken part in group shows including ''''The Library of Babel'''' at the Zabludowicz Collection, London (2010), ''''The Beauty of Distance'''' at the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2010), ''''The Surreal House'''' at the Barbican, London (2010), ''''Living in Evolution ''''at the Busan Biennale (2010), and ''''The Best of Times, The Worst of Times'''' at the 1st Kiev Biennale (2012).

Girl meets boy. It''s a story as old as time. But what happens when an old story meets a brand new set of circumstances?Ali Smith''s re-mix of Ovid''s most joyful metamorphosis is a story about the kind of fluidity that can''t be bottled and sold.It is about girls and boys, girls and girls, love and transformation, a story of puns and doubles, reversals and revelations.Funny and fresh, poetic and political, Girl Meets Boy is a myth of metamorphosis for the modern world.

Third edition of a history of Australian painting, first published in 1962 and revised in 1971. The relationship between international influences and changing political, social and artistic contexts remains central. This edition includes three new chapters by Terry Smith extending the coverage to 1990 and outlining the various influences of conceptual art, new interest in Aboriginal painting, and feminist and postmodernist theories. Illustrated throughout with colour and black-and-white reproductions. Includes notes and index.