Claire Prentice
Non-fiction writer
About
Claire Prentice is an award-winning journalist, and the author of historical narrative nonfiction books. Her first book, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island, tells the story of a group of 51 tribespeople who in 1905 were taken from their home in the Philippines to New York to be exhibited as a human zoo. It was shortlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize for Nonfiction, was an Amazon book of the year, and a New York Post ‘must-read.’ Claire’s work has been praised by critics from the New Yorker, New York Times, and Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Claire makes audio documentaries for the BBC, edited an arts magazine and was a commissioning editor for the Sunday Times. Her most memorable journalistic assignments include covering three US Presidential elections; meeting research scientists in the Antarctic; a reportage piece on the growing number of young Hasidic Jewish men and women breaking away from their religious community in Brooklyn; and the story of Justo Gallego Martinez who was building a church in Madrid using found materials from a plan which existed only in his mind. Claire has presented webinars, and hosted writing workshops. She is currently working on a project about extreme social withdrawal and isolation among young people around the globe.
She has received grants, awards, and fellowships from Virginia Humanities, Kraków Unesco City of Literature, Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, Rockefeller Archive Center, Creative Scotland, Scottish Book Trust, and the Women in Journalism Scotland x Joseph Rowntree Foundation. She lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.