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


Early life

Linda Grant was born in
Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...
. 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 The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the lon ...
, 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 pop ...
– and they adopted the surname Grant in the early 1950s. She was educated at The Belvedere School, read English at the
University of York , mottoeng = On the threshold of wisdom , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £8.0 million , budget = £403.6 million , chancellor = Heather Melville , vice_chancellor = Charlie Jeffery , students ...
(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 and Westdale, adjacent to the Royal Botanical Ga ...
in Canada. She did post-graduate studies at
Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located from ...
.


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 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', 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 (VaD) is dementia caused by problems in the supply of blood to the brain, typically a series of minor strokes, leading to worsening cognitive abilities, the decline occurring piecemeal. The term refers to a syndrome consisting ...
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 that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
's ''
Thinking Allowed ''Thinking Allowed'' is a radio discussion programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday afternoons between 16:00 and 16:30 and repeated between 00:15 and 00:45 on Monday mornings. It focuses on the latest social science research and is hosted ...
'' 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 , mottoeng = So that they may have life , established = , type = public research university , endowment = £20.0 million , budget = £326 million , chancellor = David Willetts , vice_chancellor = Nishan Canagarajah , head_labe ...
's July 2008 'Unsettling Women: Contemporary Women's Writing and Diaspora' conference, and later published in the journal ''
Wasafiri ''Wasafiri'' is a quarterly British literary magazine covering international contemporary writing. Founded in 1984, the magazine derives its name from a Swahili word meaning "travellers" that is etymologically linked with the Arabic word "safari" ...
'', 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, ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' 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 Virago is a British publisher of women's writing and books on Feminism, feminist topics. Started and run by women in the 1970s and bolstered by the success of the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM), Virago has been credited as one of several Briti ...
(London) 2006 *''The Thoughtful Dresser'', Virago Press (London) 2009


Fiction

*''The Cast Iron Shore'', Granta Books (London) 1995 *''
When I Lived in Modern Times ''When I Lived in Modern Times'' is a novel by Linda Grant. It won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2000. Following being awarded the Orange Prize, there were accusations of plagiarism leveled against the author. The accusations were claimed to ...
'', 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 ''The Dark Circle'' is the seventh novel by English novelist and journalist Linda Grant. Published in November 2016, it tells the story of tubercular east London twins, Lenny and Miriam Lynskey, sent to convalesce in a post-World War II sanitori ...
'', Virago Press (London) 2016 *''A Stranger City'', Virago Press (London) 2019


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 The David Higham Prize for Fiction was inaugurated in 1975 to mark the 80th birthday of David Higham, literary agent, and was awarded annually to a citizen of the Commonwealth, Republic of Ireland, Pakistan, or South Africa for a first novel or boo ...
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 the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
and
Age Concern Age Concern is the banner title used by a number of Charitable organization, charitable organizations (NGOs) specifically concerned with the needs and interests of all older people (defined as those over the age of 50) based chiefly in the four cou ...
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 2009–12), Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007–08) and Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (2014–2017)) is one of the United Kingdom's m ...
and was
short-listed A short list or shortlist is a list of candidates for a job, prize, award, political position, etc., that has been reduced from a longer list of candidates (sometimes via intermediate lists known as "long lists"). The length of short lists varie ...
for the
Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize The Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize is an annual British literary prize inaugurated in 1977. It is named after the host ''Jewish Quarterly'' and the prize's founder Harold Hyam Wingate. The award recognises Jewish and non-Jewish writers r ...
the same year. In 2002 her third novel ''Still Here'' was
long-listed A short list or shortlist is a list of candidates for a job, prize, award, political position, etc., that has been reduced from a longer list of candidates (sometimes via intermediate lists known as "long lists"). The length of short lists varie ...
for the
Man Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. ...
. 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 ( he, יִשְׂרָאֵלִים‎, translit=Yīśrāʾēlīm; ar, الإسرائيليين, translit=al-ʾIsrāʾīliyyin) are the citizens and nationals of the State of Israel. The country's populace is composed primarily of Jew ...
entitled ''The People on the Street: A Writer's View of Israel''. ''The Clothes on Their Backs'' was short-listed for the
Man Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. ...
in 2008 and won ''
The South Bank Show ''The South Bank Show'' is a British television arts magazine series originally produced by London Weekend Television and broadcast on ITV between 1978 and 2010. A new version of the series began 27 May 2012 on Sky Arts. Conceived, written, ...
'' 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 George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, th ...
(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 The Women's Prize for Fiction (previously with sponsor names Orange Prize for Fiction (1996–2006 and 2009–12), Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007–08) and Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (2014–2017)) is one of the United Kingdom's m ...
.


References


External links

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