Taras Grescoe, a non-fiction specialist, writes essays, articles, and books.
He is the author of Sacré Blues, The End of Elsewhere, The Devil's Picnic, Bottomfeeder, Straphanger, and most recently, Shanghai Grand.
Taras is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Guardian, and National Geographic Traveler. He has written features for Saveur, Gourmet, Afar, the Wall Street Journal, Salon, Wired, the Walrus, the Los Angeles Times, the Independent, the Globe and Mail, Maclean's, Men's Health, the Chicago Tribune Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, the Times of London, and Condé Nast Traveller. He has prowled nocturnally in the footsteps of Dalí and Buñuel in Toledo, Spain for National Geographic Traveler, eaten bugs at the Insectarium for The Independent, and substituted for the late William Safire in the New York Times Magazine. His travel essays have been published in several anthologies.
His journalism has been recognized with three Canadian National Magazine Awards, two Western Magazine Awards, and awards from the Northern Lights Foundation and the North American Association of Travel Journalists.
Sacré Blues was awarded the Best First Book Prize and the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction from the Quebec Writers; Federation, and the Edna Staebler Prize for Creative Non-Fiction
Bottomfeeder won the 2008 Writers’ Trust Award for Non-Fiction, a national award given for the best non-fiction book in Canada. It was also awarded the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction by the Quebec Writers’ Federation, first prize for Literary Food Writing from the International Association of Culinary Professionals, and was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize.
Straphanger won the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction, and was one of five finalists for the Writers’ Trust Award in 2012, as well as being longlisted for the National B.C. Book Prize for Non-Fiction and becoming one of five finalists for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.
Taras has twice been invited to appear at the Edinburgh Book Festival (where he learned to love brown sauce and vegetarian haggis), appeared at the St-Malo Étonnants Voyageurs festival, done the amazing Literary Journalism program at the Banff Centre (where he had his fellow scribes imbibing authentic absinthe from the Val de Travers), and has led seminars on travel and food writing from the depths of Westmount to the heights of Haida Gwaii.
Following the publication of Straphanger, he has given dozens of keynote talks—from Portland, Oregon to Halifax, Nova Scotia—on the subject of sustainable transportation and urbanism.
Born in Toronto, raised in Calgary and Vancouver, and schooled in flânerie in Paris, he now lives on an island called Montreal, which can be found at the confluence of the Ottawa and Saint Lawrence Rivers.
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