Linda Grant (born 15 February 1951) is an English novelist and journalist.

Early life

Linda Grant was born in

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

. She was the oldest child of Benny Ginsberg, a businessman who made and sold hairdressing products, and Rose Haft; both parents had immigrant backgrounds – Benny's family was Polish-Jewish, Rose's

Russian-Jewish The history of the Jews in Russia and areas historically connected with it goes back at least 1,500 years. Jews in Russia have historically constituted a large religious and ethnic diaspora; the Russian Empire at one time hosted the largest po ...

– and they adopted the surname Grant in the early 1950s. She was educated at The Belvedere School, read English at the

University of York The University of York (abbreviated as or ''York'' for Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a public Collegiate university, collegiate research university in York, England. Established in 1963, the university has expanded to more than thir ...

(1972 to 1975), then completed an M.A. in English at

McMaster University McMaster University (McMaster or Mac) is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main McMaster campus is on of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood, Ontario, Ainslie Wood and Westdale, Ontario, Westd ...

in Canada. She did post-graduate studies at

Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a Public university, public research university in British Columbia, Canada. It maintains three campuses in Greater Vancouver, respectively located in Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, British Columbia, Surrey, and ...

Career

In 1985, Grant returned to England and became a journalist, working for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', 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 Vascular dementia is dementia caused by a series of strokes. Restricted blood flow due to strokes reduces oxygen and glucose delivery to the brain, causing cell injury and neurological deficits in the affected region. Subtypes of vascular dement ...

called ''Remind Me Who I Am, Again'', which was cited in a discussion about ageing on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

's '' Thinking Allowed'' in December 2003. Her fiction draws heavily on her Jewish background, family history, and the history of Liverpool. In an interview by Emma Parker for the

University of Leicester The University of Leicester ( ) is a public university, public research university based in Leicester, England. The main campus is south of the city centre, adjacent to Victoria Park, Leicester, Victoria Park. The university's predecessor, Univ ...

's July 2008 'Unsettling Women: Contemporary Women's Writing and Diaspora' conference, and later published in the journal '' Wasafiri'', Grant said:

I always wanted to make my living as a writer, but you couldn’t get a job as an author, so I got a job as a reporter on a local paper just before my eighteenth birthday. I always knew that sooner or later I would write fiction, although I didn’t realise it would be as late as it was. I didn’t write a novel until after the age of forty because it took me a long time to find a fictional voice, which was to do with being Jewish. ��I had been trying different voices and found none adequate. I felt that there were two modes open to me. One was to have a voice like Howard Jacobson, which is absolutely embedded within a recognisable Jewish community, but I was from a community which was not recognised as Jewish. People say, ‘Oh, I never knew that there were any Jews in Liverpool’. Also, growing up in a middle-class family made me marginal to the Liverpool voice, which had always been working-class or Irish. And then there was the generalised middle-class English voice, which always felt to me like ventriloquism. And I didn’t feel that I could write like an American Jewish author such as Philip Roth, who shows how Jewish Americans, like Irish Americans and Italian Americans, have contributed to American national identity, because by the time the Jews arrived here, British national identity had already been formed. And that’s why my first novel, ''The Cast Iron Shore'', is about somebody who feels marginal. It was only when I started writing about people who are marginal, who have problematic identities and problems with belonging, that I found my voice.

Grant's choices of her favourite pieces of classical music were broadcast as part of

BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, Radio drama, drama, High culture, culture and the arts ...

's ''Saturday Classics'' in June 2012. In November 2016, ''

'' newspaper published a detailed account of Grant's writing process, in which she noted, "My rituals of writing are so calcified I could be an elderly colonel at his gentleman's club: ironed newspaper, tea piping hot, shoes the correct colour for in town. Without the scaffolding of my habits, I'm superstitiously convinced I'd never write a word. I don't – can't – write after lunch, in a cafe or any other public place, including trains and planes, or when anyone else is in the house. It's an act of severe, intense solitude, partly now destroyed by the internet, and its deceptive promise of the ease of looking things up as you go along."

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 *''Upstairs at the Party'', Virago Press (London) 2014 *'' The Dark Circle'', Virago Press (London) 2016 *''A Stranger City'', Virago Press (London) 2019 *''The Story of the Forest'', Virago (London) 2023

Awards

Grant's

début novel A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to pu ...

, ''The Cast Iron Shore'', won the David Higham Prize for Fiction in 1996; awarded to the best first novel of the year. Three years later her second, non-fiction, work, ''Remind Me Who I Am Again'', won both the

Mind The mind is that which thinks, feels, perceives, imagines, remembers, and wills. It covers the totality of mental phenomena, including both conscious processes, through which an individual is aware of external and internal circumstances ...

and Age Concern Book of the Year awards. Her second fictional novel, ''When I Lived in Modern Times'' won the 2000

Orange Prize for Fiction The Women's Prize for Fiction (previously with sponsor names Orange Prize for Fiction (1996–2006 and 2009–2012), Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007–08) and Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (2014–2017) is one of the United Kingdom's ...

and was short-listed for the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize the same year. In 2002 her third novel ''Still Here'' was long-listed for the

Man Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, wh ...

. In 2006, Grant won the First Prize

Lettre Ulysses Award The Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage has been given annually since 2003 for the best texts in the genre of literary reportage, which must have been first published during the previous two years. The award was initiated by Lettre Intern ...

for the "Art of Reportage", the last to be awarded, for her non-fiction work about the

Israeli people Israelis (; ) are the citizens and nationals of the State of Israel. The country's populace is composed primarily of Jews and Arabs, who respectively account for 75 percent and 20 percent of the national figure, followed by other ethnic and ...

entitled ''The People on the Street: A Writer's View of Israel''. ''The Clothes on Their Backs'' was short-listed for the

in 2008 and won '' The South Bank Show'' award in the Literature category. It was also long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction in the same year. In 2014, Grant was appointed a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820 by King George IV to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 800 Fellows, elect ...

(FRSL). In March 2017, it was announced that Grant's novel ''The Dark Circle'' had been longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.

References

External links

*
Journalisted – Articles by Linda Grant
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grant, Linda Living people 1951 births Alumni of the University of York English people of Polish-Jewish descent English people of Russian-Jewish descent English women journalists English women non-fiction writers English women novelists Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature The Guardian journalists Jewish English writers Jewish novelists Jewish women writers People educated at The Belvedere Academy Writers from Liverpool 20th-century English novelists 21st-century English novelists 20th-century English women writers 21st-century English women writers