About Colin
My Story
Colin Grant is an author of six books. They include: Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey; and a group biography of the Wailers, I&I, The Natural Mystics. His memoir, Bageye at the Wheel, was shortlisted for the Pen/Ackerley Prize, 2013. Grant’s history of epilepsy, A Smell of Burning, was a Sunday Times Book of the Year 2016.
As a producer for the BBC, Grant wrote and directed several radio drama documentaries including A Fountain of Tears: The Murder of Federico Garcia Lorca; and A History of the N Word.
Grant is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Director of WritersMosaic, an innovative online platform for new writing and a division of the Royal Literary Fund. He also writes for a number of newspapers and journals including the Guardian, Observer, New Statesman, TLS, London Review of Books, Granta and New York Review of Books.
Grant’s Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation, was a BBC radio 4 Book of the Week and a Daily Telegraph Book of the year 2019. His latest memoir, I’m Black So You Don’t Have to Be is published by Jonathan Cape on 26 January 2023.
Awards
Sunday Times Book of the Year
Daily Telegraph Book of the Year
BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week
Sunday Times Book of the Year
Daily Telegraph Book of the Year
BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week
RT @MirzaWaheed: “the paradox of being black in Britain: at once invisible in the upper echelons of parliament or the professions but also…
Read MoreRT @farshoreline: If his 'Thinking Black' Essay series for @BBCRadio3 is anything to go by, @colincraiggrant's new book is bound to be a go…
Read MoreRT @katewebb_uk: @amistlin intrvs @colincraiggrant abt his memoir, I’m Black So You Don’t Have to Be. Grant says the BBC is full of timid,…
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