Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina (born 1950) is an American author and academic who has written mostly historically-grounded biographical studies. Her academic posts have included being the Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor of Biography at Dartmouth College, working as a professor at Vassar College, being a professor and a director of Africana Studies at Barnard College, and as at April 2019 being the Dean of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Commonwealth Honors College. Gerzina was the host of WAMC's nationally-syndicated radio program The Book Show for fourteen years, where she interviewed authors.
In the UK, she presented a ten-part documentary for BBC Radio 4 called Britain's Black Past, which she subsequently adapted into a book.
Selected publications
1989: Carrington: A Life
1995: Black England: Life Before Emancipation
2004: Frances Hodgson Burnett: The unexpected life of the author of The Secret Garden 2008: Mr. and Mrs. Prince: How an Extraordinary 18th-Century Family Moved out of Slavery and into Legend
References
External links
Official website
"Zadie Smith on discovering the secret history of Black England: 'Into my ignorance poured these remarkable facts', The Guardian, September 24, 2022