Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina (born 1950) is an American author and academic who has written mostly historically-grounded biographical studies.
[1][2] 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 of April 2019 being the Dean of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Commonwealth Honors College.
[3] Gerzina was the host of WAMC's nationally-syndicated radio program The Book Show for fourteen years, where she interviewed authors.
[4] In the UK, she presented a 10-part documentary for BBC Radio 4 called Britain's Black Past,[5] which she subsequently adapted into a book.
[6][7] She was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, just before she was five years old.