Richard Grant is a freelance British travel writer based in Arizona. He was born in Malaysia, lived in Kuwait as a boy and then moved to London. He went to school in Hammersmith and received a history degree from University College, London. After graduation he worked as a security guard, a janitor, a house painter and a club DJ before moving to America where he lived a nomadic life in the American West, eventually settling in Tucson, Arizona, as a base from which to travel. He supported himself by writing articles for Men's Journal, Esquire and Details, among others. Grant's first book American Nomads looks at nomadism and people who choose to live on the road in America. It won the 2004 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. Grant wrote the script for a BBC documentary called American Nomads, based in part on the book, which aired in the fall of 2011. His next book God's Middle Finger is about the lawless region of the Sierra Madre mountains in northwestern Mexico in which Grant traveled. It was nominated for the 2009 Dolman Best Travel Book Award. Grant co-wrote a screenplay about the Mexican border with Johnny Ferguson and Ruben Ruiz entitled Tres Huevos/A Burning Thing.