fiction.wikisort.org - Writer

Colin Grant (born 1961, Hitchin, England) is a British writer of Jamaican origin who is the author of several books, including a 2008 biography of Marcus Garvey entitled Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey and His Dream of Mother Africa. Grant is also a historian, Associate Fellow in the Centre for Caribbean Studies[1] and a BBC radio producer.[2]

Colin Grant
Born	1961 (age 60–61) Hitchin, England, UK
Nationality	English
Occupation	Writer, historian
Notable work	Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey and His Dream of Mother Africa (2008); Bageye at the Wheel (2012)
Website	www.colingrant.info/colin-grant/4531483161

Biography

Early years

Grant grew up on a council estate in Luton, had a brother Christopher[3] and attended St Columba's College, St Albans.[4]

Career

Grant joined the BBC in 1991, and has worked as a TV script editor and radio producer of arts and science programmes on Radio 4 and on the World Service. In 2009, a two-part documentary about Caribbean Voices (1943–1958) was produced by Grant.[5] He has written and directed plays, including The Clinic, based on the lives of the photojournalists Tim Page and Don McCullin. Among several radio drama-documentaries he has written and produced are African Man of Letters: The Life of Ignatius Sancho, A Fountain of Tears: The Murder of Federico Garcia Lorca, and Move Over Charlie Brown: The Rise of Boondocks.

Grant's first book was the biography Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey and His Dream of Mother Africa (2008), described in The Jamaica Gleaner as "magisterial, meticulously researched",[6] in The Independent on Sunday as "drawing on gargantuan research",[7] and in The Guardian as "eminently readable".[8] In 2011, I & I – The Natural Mystics: Marley, Tosh, and Wailer was published, a group biography, about which Lemn Sissay said: "Colin Grant has cleverly personified the birth of a nation, the birth of a religion and the birth of reggae through the lives of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer."[9] This was followed in 2012 by Bageye at the Wheel, a memoir about growing up Jamaican in Luton that was shortlisted for the PEN/Ackerley Prize.[10]

Grant's next book, a Smell of Burning, was a history of epilepsy and was chosen by The Sunday Times as a Book of the Year 2016.[11] His 2019 book, Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation, was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week.[12]

Personal life

Grant lives in Brighton, UK, with Jo Alderson and their three children, Jasmine, Maya and Toby.

Books

• Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey and His Dream of Mother Africa,[13] London: Jonathan Cape, 2008; Oxford University Press, United States, 2008
• I & I – The Natural Mystics: Marley, Tosh, and Wailer,[14] London: Jonathan Cape, 2011; New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011
• Bageye at the Wheel,[15] London: Jonathan Cape, 2012
• A Smell of Burning: The Story of Epilepsy, London: Jonathan Cape, 2017[16]
• Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation, London: Jonathan Cape, 2019

References

External links

• Official website
• Rob Sharp, "A Page in the Life: Colin Grant", The Telegraph, 11 May 2012.
• Interview with Colin Grant on "New Books in African American Studies".

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