Linda Grant was born in Liverpool. She read English at the University of York and did further postgraduate studies in Canada at McMaster and Simon Fraser Universities. For some years she worked as a journalist, writing for the Guardian and Independent on Sunday. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds honorary doctorates from the University of York and John Moores University.

Her first novel, The Cast Iron Shore (1996), won the David Higham First Novel Prize and was shortlied for the Guardian Book Prize. Her next book, Remind Me Who I Am, Again (1998), a family memoir about her mother’s dementia, won the Mind Book of the Year award and the Age Concern Book mod the Year award. Her next book, When I Lived in Modern Times (2000) won the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her next novel, Still Here (2000) was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her non-fiction book, The People on the Street: A writer’s View of Israel, (2005) won the Letter Ulysses Prize for Literary Reportage. Her next novel, The Clothes on their Backs (2008) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her seventh novel The Dark Circle (2016) was shortlisted for the Bailey’s Prize and the Wingate Prize. Her next novel, A Stranger City, was published in 2019 and won the Wingate Literary prize for 2020. Her latest novel, The Story of the Forest, is published in 2023.

She has lived in London since 1984.