Author Zadie Smith, left, speaks during an event at the University of Kansas Hall Center for the Humanities on Friday, Dec. 2, 2016. She was interviewed by Lawrence Public Library executive director Brad Allen.

Zadie Smith, author of the acclaimed “White Teeth” and other novels, touched on feminism, multicultural characters and her aversion to social media Friday at the University of Kansas.

Among other thoughts, Smith said her own writing process was like Snapchat in a way: fleeting, at least to her. The social media app allows users to post photos that then disappear.

“That is how my novels are. I don’t remember what’s in them,” she said. “I’ve actually never re-read any of them, not from front to back.”

The British author appeared before a few dozen Friends of the Hall Center and other fans for “A Conversation with Zadie Smith” Friday morning at the Hall Center for the Humanities. Thursday night she presented “Why Write?” — part of this year’s Humanities Lecture Series — for a larger crowd at the Kansas Union ballroom.

Smith, born in 1975, is biracial — her mother Jamaican, her father English, her own children blonde and green-eyed — and features multicultural characters in her novels.

She said that’s not an attempt to argue for anything, but rather simply because that’s reality. In particular, it’s her reality, and she enjoys living it and writing about it.

“Multiculturalism should not be considered a type of political ideology, just a historical fact,” she said.

To one biracial audience member who said she felt like she has to choose between her identities when she writes, Smith said that shouldn’t be seen as tragic. She said she embraces the “possibility and comedy and joy” of her own multicultural family.

“You can live in two places at once,” Smith said. “No matter what color we are, we are all ourselves, and we are all people in the world.”

She also addressed, in response to another audience member, learning to cook later in life.

Smith said she was raised in a generation of feminism where some traditionally female domains passed her by. There’s a “realm of the feminine” that’s been systematically devalued, with a lot of the things women traditionally do labeled as silly, she said.

Citing activities such as cooking, entertaining, dressing and even quilting, Smith — often photographed and fashionably attired — said she doesn’t feel that way anymore.

“I’ve really kind of backed away from it,” she said. “I am more and more interested in the things that women have had some involvement in.”

Speaking of characters in her novel “On Beauty,” Smith said that while she’s a fan of portraits, she included descriptive passages about characters’ bodies, but less so their faces, in her writing.

“I feel a bit bullied by excessive descriptions of people’s faces,” she said. “I quite like giving readers some freedom to imagine that person.”

She added a wry observation about the way many a male author has approached character descriptions of women — also focusing more on bodies than faces.

“They’re always wearing blouses, if you’ve ever noticed,” Smith said. “Blouses and pencil skirts.”

Smith does not carry a phone, she said, and hasn’t since “a few months in 2008.”

She’s not active on social media, and she doesn’t like the idea of being “a product.”

She said she doesn’t confuse her public image with her “person.” When she sees so many young people doing it, it makes her sad, Smith said.

“Why does everything have to be on sale to people?” she said. “Now, if 15 million people don’t know about it, it doesn’t exist.”