Acclaimed writer Zadie Smith, author of the award-winning masterpiece White Teeth, was a guest of the NYU Creative Writing Program’s Writers in Conversation at the Law School yesterday. Wearing an Erykah Badu-esque headwrap, Smith discussed writing, philosophy, romance, and family struggles (I’m pretty sure all of that counts as a Gallatin major) with NYU professor and host Jonathan Safran Foer, also a best-selling novelist.

Let me indulge a little: you know you go to a pretty hip school when an author like Safran Foer isn’t being interviewed, but doing the interviewing himself. This is your pro-NYU fact of the day!

Approximately 500 people turned out to witness the two great literary minds collide. 

Apparently, the two have been close friends for years—Safran Foer explained that he first met Smith (whom he called “the new face of English literature”) when he chickened out to talk to her at a White Teeth book signing. To say the least, the conversation was intellectual. With a thick British accent, Smith divulged into how human beings are “opaque,” how the literary 3rd person is dying, and how racial undertones bear difficult implications in her writing. My brain was two big vocabulary words away from exploding.

Smith forged a bond with the audience when she said that she too is distracted by Facebook. “The Internet is an absolute disaster for writers,” Smith said before adding that she only gets two hours of work done everyday on average. Bobst dwellers, there is hope!

Photo courtesy of Flickr user bluelephant.