Michael Smith (writer)

Michael Smith (born 1976 in London) is an English writer, broadcaster and film-maker. He was brought up in Hartlepool, County Durham and graduated from University College London. His best-known work is The Giro Playboy.

He began writing by producing a series of pamphlets which became collectors' items and which he worked up into The Giro Playboy (Faber and Faber, 2006).

Shorty Loves Wing Wong (Faber and Faber, 2007), a prequel to The Giro Playboy, incorporating art by Jim Medway, was the follow-up.

Both Faber books were preceded by collectable limited editions, published by Simon Finch and To Hell, respectively. The Simon Finch edition collected together the early The Giro Playboy pamphlets and a compact disk of readings, set to music by collaborator Flora, packaged in a hand-stencilled pizza box. Shorty Loves Wing Wong was accompanied by an exhibition of Jim Medway's artwork at London's Paul Stolper Gallery.

Unreal City, Smith's third Faber book (September 2013), is a limited edition, with an accompanying CD of readings, combining music by Andrew Weatherall. Paperback and iBook versions will follow.

His writing has been anthologised in collections, including: Oysteropolis, in On Nature (Harper, 2011), and extracts from The Giro Playboy in Reactions 5: New Poetry (Pen & Inc Press, University of East Anglia, 2005).

Smith has also written features for The Guardian and The Observer newspapers, The Idler, Zembla and Fire & Knives, as well as regular columns for magazines Dazed & Confused, Good For Nothing and Bare Bones/Le Gun.

Smith has written and presented two six-part TV series on BBC Four, Citizen Smith, examining what it means to be English (2008)' and Michael Smith's Drivetime, a road movie exploring the cultural impact of the car (2009). They were followed by a one-hour televisual love-letter, A Journey Back to Newcastle: Michael Smith's Deep North (2010).

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