Colin Grant is an author of five 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. He also writes for a number of newspapers and journals including the Guardian, Observer, New Statesman, TLS, 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 will be published by Jonathan Cape in 2023.

Events participated in:

The Rise of the Festival: Listen to Hay, Edinburgh, and Jaipur Festival Chairs Caroline Michel, Allan Little, and William Dalrymple, as they discuss the rise of the festival and power of the spoken word with Oscar Guardiola-Rivera and Colin Grant. (2022)

WritersMosaic: Join Colin Grant as he introduces his initiative, WritersMosaic, an online platform for surprising and moving new writing from a mosaic of literary voices and cultures across the UK. (2022)