A TALK by novelist, essayist and short story writer Zadie Smith is amongst the highlights of the summer programme at Bromsgrove's Artrix arts centre.

Her acclaimed first novel, White Teeth (2000), is a vibrant portrait of contemporary multicultural London, told through the story of three ethnically diverse families.

The book won a number of awards and prizes, including the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread First Novel Award, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book).

White Teeth has been translated into more than 20 languages and was adapted for Channel 4 television for broadcast in autumn 2002.

Her tenure as Writer in Residence at the Institute of Contemporary Arts resulted in the publication of an anthology of erotic stories entitled Piece of Flesh (2001).

She also wrote the introduction for The Burned Children of America (2003), a collection of 18 short stories by a new generation of young American writers.

Zadie Smith's second novel, The Autograph Man (2002), a story of loss, obsession and the nature of celebrity, won the 2003 Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize for Fiction.

In 2003 she was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'.

Her third novel, On Beauty, was published in 2005, and won the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction.

She has also written a non-fiction book about writing - Fail Better (2006); and Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays (2009).

She is also the editor of The Book of Other People.

Zadie Smith will be at Artrix on Friday, August at 7 at 7.30 pm.

Tickets cost £12 (£6 students) and are available from the box office on 01527 577330 or artrix.co.uk