Biography
Charlotte Gray
Charlotte Gray is most recently the author of Nellie McClung, in Penguin Canada's series, "Extraordinary Canadians." Her previous book, Reluctant Genius, The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell, was a 2006 bestseller and won the Ottawa Book Award and the Donald Creighton Award for Ontario History. It was also nominated for the Nereus Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize, the National Business Book Award, and the Trillium Award. She has also written five other books of popular history, which have all been bestsellers. The Museum Called Canada (2004) won the 2004 Canadian Authors Association Lela Common Award for History. The previous year, she published Canada, A Portrait in Letters 1800-2000 (2003). Flint & Feather: The Life and Times of E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake won the University of British Columbia Medal for Biography for 2002, and the Drummer General Award for Non-Fiction for 2002, and was nominated for the Drainie-Taylor Award for Biography. Sisters in the Wilderness: The Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill, won the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award for the best non-fiction book of 2000 and the Floyd S. Chalmers Award in Ontario History. Charlotte's first book, Mrs. King: The Life and Times of Isabel Mackenzie King, won the 1998 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the Canadian Authors Association / Birks Foundation Award for Non-fiction, and was nominated for the Viacom Award and a Governor-General's Award.
One of Canada's best-known and highly respected writers, Charlotte has contributed to all of Canada's major magazines and newspapers, won several major magazine awards and had a regular politics column in Saturday Night Magazine for eight years. She has frequently appeared as a commentator on CBC radio and television, and TVOntario. In 2004, she completed a CBC documentary on Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first Prime Minister, and appeared as his celebrity advocate in the CBC series The Greatest Canadian. She was a judge for the 2004 Giller Award for Fiction, the 2005 Drainie-Taylor Award for Memoir and Biography, and the 2008 Charles Taylor Award for Literary Non-Fiction.
Charlotte was born in England, and came to Canada in 1979. She holds a BA in Modern History from Oxford University, did post-graduate work at the London School of Economics and has honorary doctorates from Mount St. Vincent University, Nova Scotia, the University of Ottawa, Queen's University and York University. An Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of History at Carleton University, she is the 2003 Recipient of the Pierre Berton Award for distinguished achievement in popularizing Canadian history. She chairs the National History Society, and is a member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Charlotte and her husband George Anderson live in Ottawa during the winter and on an island in Newboro Lake, on the Rideau Canal system, during the summer. They have three sons.