Neil Grant was born in Glasgow, Scotland in The Year of the Fire Horse but was prevented from sounding like Billy Connolly for the rest of his life when he came to Australia at age thirteen. His earliest influence was Dr. Seuss whose poetic vision and imaginative wherewithal has remained with him to this day.  

He has backpacked, bussed and blundered through India, Yugoslavia, the United Kingdom, Israel, Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and paid for these expeditions with a series of unlikely occupations. At various times of his life he has been an instrument steriliser, a cook, a brickie’s labourer, a roof-tile reclaimer, a carrot picker, a tree planter, but he has always been a writer.

His poetic works have been published in & [ampersand], Kingfisher Collection 2001 and Overland Express (online). He has won first place in the Southern Cross Literary Competition and was highly commended in the Karrinyup Writers’ Club Poetry Competition. In 2000, Neil was awarded a Victorian Writers’ Centre Mentorship for his young adult surf novel Rhino Chasers.

Rhino Chasers — the story of three young guys on surfari across the broad foot of Australia — was published in 2002 by Allen & Unwin and is being developed as a feature film. Neil's second novel — Indo Dreaming — charts the progress of Rhino Chasers' Goog as he travels through Indonesia in search of his dead friend.

The Australia Council for the Arts awarded him a grant in 2005 to write a novel about the refugee situation in Australia. The story is set in suburban Melbourne and is centred around two young guys one of whom is an Afghan asylum seeker. He is currently working on this manuscript.

Neil is committed to producing quality writing for young people and believes this to be the most rewarding and challenging of all writing occupations. He is particularly interested in getting reluctant readers turning pages and hopes that through his writing and speaking he can lure some of them away from their Playstations. 

Neil lives in Kinglake on the Dividing Range near Melbourne with his growing family and two chickens. He dreams of the ocean and wakes with salt in his eyebrows.