Book Review: How to Write a Grant by Meredith Noble

• Title: How to Write a Grant: Become a Grant Writing Unicorn
• Author: Meredith Noble
• Year: 2021
• Type: Nonfiction

Over the years I’ve heard a lot of people talking about how difficult grant writing is. I’ve no doubt that they’re correct but, well, all writing is difficult to do well. What makes grant writing so special? So I picked up this book out of curiosity and because my library had it (and few other options).

After reading it and searching for the links above, I now know that in certain circles this book is some sort of a big deal. People really like it. I am not one of them.

I don’t hate it, but it’s definitely a self-published work. The organisation of the material isn’t that great, with topics frequently being used in the content several chapters before they’re explained. There’s also no index, which makes it difficult to use as a resource going forward. The tone is friendly and supportive, but also grated on me since it reminded me a lot of the tone of the essays before recipes from mommy food bloggers. It frequently lacks citations for quotes or references. Regularly it comes across more like an ad for their training services/community than a standalone resource.

If you can get past that, there’s useful content in there. It was enough to give me a better idea of what’s involved in writing grants, which is what I was looking for. It’s certainly a lot of work, but nothing I couldn’t manage if I wanted. After reading a different book that’s more pragmatic and better fit to my nonfiction preferences.