Zadie Smith (pictured) has landed the job as a reviewer for Harper’s Magazine‘s New Books column. She begins in March 2011 replacing Benjamin Moser. Moser will remain on staff as a contributing editor. Moser deems Smith an “outstanding writer.”
Smith’s writing credentials include authoring three novels, several essay collections, and short stories. In 2003, the literary publication Granta included her on its list of 20 best young authors. She has served as a tenured professor at New York University since September 2010.
Smith shares these thoughts about her new job: “I think a good book review is a place to meet a book on its own terms, not as an ideological vehicle or an academic plaything. Often people think of writing as primary and reading as the lesser art; in my life it’s the other way around. When I write about books I’m trying to honor reading as a creative act: as far as I’m concerned the job is not simply to describe an end product but to delineate a process, an intimate experience with a book which the general reader understands just as well as the professional critic.”