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“The question of dimension at every level”: An Interview with Ali Smith on Companion Piece, Contemporaneity, and Crisis

Abstract

An interview with Ali Smith about her latest novel Companion Piece (2022), its relationship to her Seasonal Quartet (2016 –2020), and responding to contemporary society through fiction. In particular, Smith discusses how Companion Piece came out of Seasonal and writing fiction in relation to its own time and questions of both contemporaneity and history. This conversation also spans both recent and recurrent concerns throughout Smith’s writing, including: language and narrative, art in contemporary society, technology and capitalism, environmental crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This interview was held in-person on 24th June 2022 in Trinity College, University of Cambridge. The conversation transcript has been lightly edited and condensed for length.

Keywords

Ali Smith, Companion Piece, contemporary fiction, Seasonal, crisis

How to Cite

Calder, A. J., (2024) ““The question of dimension at every level”: An Interview with Ali Smith on Companion Piece, Contemporaneity, and Crisis”, C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings 11(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/c21.10964

Funding

Name
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC): Open-Oxford-Cambridge, Doctoral Training Partnership
Funding ID
[ref. AH/R012709/1]
102

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Authors

Alex John Calder orcid logo (University of Cambridge)

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

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No CI

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