Linda Grant

Linda Grant (born 15 February 1951) is a British novelist and occasional journalist.

Early life

Linda Grant was born in Liverpool to a family of Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants.

She was educated at The Belvedere School (Girls' Day School Trust), read English at the University of York (1972 to 1975), then completed an M.A. in English at McMaster University in Canada. She did post-graduate studies at Simon Fraser University.

Career

In 1985 Grant returned to Britain and became a journalist, working for The Guardian and eventually wrote her own column for eighteen months. She published her first book, a non-fiction work, Sexing the Millennium: A Political History of the Sexual Revolution in 1993. She wrote a personal memoir of her mother's fight with vascular dementia called Remind Me Who I Am, Again.

Her fiction draws heavily on her Jewish background, family history, and the history of Liverpool. She has developed a special interest in the state of Israel.^{[citation needed]}

Bibliography

Non fiction

• Sexing the Millennium: A Political History of the Sexual Revolution. HarperCollins (London) 1993
• Remind Me Who I Am, Again Granta Books (London) 1998
• The People on the Street, a writer's view of Israel, Virago Press (London) 2006
• The Thoughtful Dresser, Virago Press (London) 2009

Fiction

• The Cast Iron Shore, Granta Books (London) 1995
• When I Lived in Modern Times, Granta Books (London) 2000
• Still Here, Little Brown May (London) 2002
• The Clothes On Their Backs, Virago Press (London) 2008
• We Had It So Good, Virago Press (London) 2011

Awards

Grant's début novel, The Cast Iron Shore, won the David Higham Prize for Fiction in 1996; awarded to the best first novel of the year.^[1] Three years later her second non-fiction work, Remind Me Who I Am Again, won the Mind Book of the Year award.^[2] Her second fictional novel, When I Lived in Modern Times won the 2000 Orange Prize for Fiction and was short-listed for the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize the same year.^[3][4] In 2002 her third novel Still Here was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize.^[5]

In 2006, Grant won the First Prize Lettre Ulysses Award for the "Art of Reportage", the last to be awarded, for her non-fiction work about the Israeli people entitled The People on the Street: A Writer's View of Israel.^[6][7] The Clothes on Their Backs was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2008 and won The South Bank Show award in the Literature category.^[8][9][10] It was also long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction in the same year.^[11]

References

External links

• Official website
• Journalisted - Articles by Linda Grant