Charlotte Gray

Charlotte Gray is one of Canada’s best-known biographers and writers of popular history. Her ability to provide original and intriguing entry points into history has earned her a large and faithful readership, and regular requests to appear on television and radio. 

Her most recent book is Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons: The Lives of Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara Delano Roosevelt. Her award-winning bestsellers include The Promise of Canada: People And Ideas That Have Shaped Our Country: The Massey Murder; Reluctant Genius: Alexander Graham Bell and the Passion for Invention; and Gold Diggers, Striking It Rich in the Klondike. Gold Diggers was the basis of both a US Discovery Channel docudrama and a PBS documentary.

Sisters in the Wilderness, which Charlotte published in 1999, was named as one of the 25 most influential Canadian books of the past 25 years by the Literary Review of Canada. It was made into a CBC docudrama.

Charlotte has chaired the boards of both Canada’s National History Society and the Art Canada Institute, and has served on the boards of PEN Canada and the Ottawa International Writers Festival. She has frequently served on Writers Trust committees, as well as being a juror for the Cundill International History Prize, Scotiabank Giller Prize, the RBC Taylor Prize, the City of Ottawa Book Prize, several CBC awards and the Kobzar Literary Award.

Born in Sheffield, and a graduate of Oxford University and the London School of Economics, Charlotte came to Canada in 1978. She worked as a political commentator, book reviewer and magazine columnist before she turned to biography and popular history.

An adjunct research professor at Carleton University, in Ottawa, she holds five honorary degrees, has won a Scholar Award from the Library and Archives Canada Foundation, and is a member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.