"The First Person and Other Stories" is the fourth collection of short fiction from the Booker- and Orange Prize-shortlisted Ali Smith. "The First Person and Other Stories" effortlessly appeals to our hearts, heads and funny bones. Always intellectually playful, but also very moving and funny, Smith explores the ways and whys of storytelling. In one, a middle-aged woman conducts a poignant conversation with her gauche fourteen-year-old self. In another, an innocent supermarket shopper finds in her trolley a foul-mouthed, insulting and beautiful child. Challenging the boundaries between fiction and reality, a third presents its narrator, "Ali", as she drinks tea, phones a friend and muses on the relationship between the short story and - a nymph. Innovative, sophisticated and intelligent, the stories in "The First Person and Other Stories" are packed full of ideas, jokes, nuance and compassion. Ali Smith and the short story are made for each other. Praise for "The First Person and Other Stories": "Smith"s is a profoundly optimistic vision. These stories are frightening yet funny, and the sheer exuberance and playfulness of her language endows dark matters with a lightness of touch". ("New Statesman"). "She"s a genius, genuinely modern in the heroic, glorious sense". (Alain de Botton). "Terrific ...hurrah for Ali Smith...The best short-story writers make it look as easy as making a cup of tea. Ali Smith is one of these...A bold and brilliant collection of stories by a writer unafraid to give it to us as it is". ("Times"). "A glorious collection that celebrates and subverts the short story form". ("Independent"). Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962 and lives in Cambridge. She is the author of "Free Love", "Like", "Hotel World", "Other Stories and Other Stories", "The Whole Story and Other Stories", "The Accidental", "Girl Meets Boy", "There but for the" and "Artful".