Parky Profiles: Linda Grant
- Guest Writer
- Jun 21
- 2 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
This summer we'll be interviewing a handful of interesting people who are living with Parkinson's. First up: the novelist Linda Grant. Linda started life as a journalist before becoming acclaimed fiction writer who won the Women's Prize in 2000 for her novel When I Lived in Modern Times, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2008 for The Clothes on Their Backs. Here, she talks for the first time about her Parkinson's diagnosis, how it has impacted her writing, and how she plans to become (maybe) the first writer to bring to life a protagonist living with Parkinson's Disease.
Don't forget to sign the Parky Charter petition by going to ParkyPetition.com!
By Podot
Each week Rory Cellan-Jones guides us between the laughs and moans in the pub. To read Rory's summary of this week's episode click here.
A bit about Linda...
Linda Grant is a novelist and journalist. She is the author of eight novels and four
works of non-fiction. She was a feature writer for the Guardian before publishing her first novel, The Cast Iron Shore, in 1996. Her second novel, When I Lived in Modern
Rimes, won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2000 and The Clothes on their Backs was
shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2008. She was also a recipient of the South Bank
Show Award in the same year. Her 1998 family memoir about her mother’s vascular
dementia, won the Mind Book of the Year. She was diagnosed with Parkinson's in
March 2023 and is currently trying to write a novel, the ability to go on being able to
type permitting, about a central character with the same diagnosis. She says "I hope it will have its comic moments, we all need a laugh".
Linda has very kindly shared an extract from her novel in progress which involves the central character who has Parkinson's attending a football match. Please click the link below to download the extract.
