Neil Smith

Neil Smith is a fiction writer who lives in Montreal, the city where he was born. He's now working on a novel titled Jones Town about a brother and a sister and their abusive parents. His previous book, a novel called Boo, came out in May 2015 with Random House imprints in the US, the UK, and Canada. The book is narrated by a young science geek who finds himself in a heaven reserved exclusively for 13-year-olds. In addition to English, Boo has been published in Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, and Portuguese. Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Quill & Quire all gave the book starred reviews. The novel won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, was nominated for a Sunburst Award and the Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book Award, and was longlisted for the Prix des libraires du Québec.

Smith published his debut, the story collection Bang Crunch, in 2007 in Canada and in 2008 in the US and the UK. The book was later translated into French and German, and individual stories also appeared in Russian, Dutch, and Spanish. It was chosen as a best book of the year by the Washington Post and the Globe and Mail, won the First Book Prize from the Quebec Writers' Federation, and was a finalist for the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. Three stories in the book were also nominated for the Journey Prize. Writer Michel Faber wrote in the Guardian that Bang Crunch had a "rare fusion of thematic boldness, humor, gravity, empathy, maturity, and first-rate prose."

Smith also translates from French to English and was nominated in 2016 for a Governor General's Literary Award for The Goddess of Fireflies, his translation of Geneviève Pettersen's novel La déesse des mouches à feu.