Neil Grant was born in Scotland in the Year of the Fire Horse. He learnt to speak Australian at the age of thirteen when his family fled to Melbourne to escape rain and deep fried Mars Bars. He finished high school at the International School of Kuala Lumpur then spent years blundering through Indonesia, Israel, Yugoslavia, India, Nepal, Thailand, Greece, Italy, the UK and Tasmania. He trained as a high school English teacher but at various times of his life he has been a joiner, a dishwasher, an instrument steriliser, a cook, a brickie's labourer, a roof-tile reclaimer, a carrot picker and a tree planter. He has always been a writer. 

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Neil spent time in Afghanistan researching The Ink Bridge and on traditional whaleboats and crater lakes in Indonesia for Indo Dreaming. His latest novel is set in a fishing village on the Central Coast of New South Wales and in the Sundbarbans in West Bengal, India

 

Neil lives in Melbourne’s outer north with his partner. He has three children.

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