At a talk on her latest essay collection, Dead and Alive, Smith said she ‘sometimes’ reads male novelists, but more often seeks the wisdom of older female writers like Helen Garner At a talk on her latest essay collection, Dead and Alive, Smith said she ‘sometimes’ reads male novelists, but more often seeks the wisdom of older female writers like Helen Garner “I don’t know when I read men any more”, the writer Zadie Smith told a literary festival audience on Sunday. “It does happen sometimes,