Sathnam Sanghera was born to Punjabi parents in the West Midlands in 1976, attended Wolverhampton Grammar School and graduated from Christ’s College, Cambridge with a first class degree in English Language and Literature in 1998. His first book, The Boy With The Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton was shortlisted for the 2008 Costa Biography Award, the 2009 PEN/Ackerley Prize and named 2009 Mind Book of the Year.

He has won numerous prizes for his journalism, including Article of the Year in the 2005 Management Today Writing Awards, Newspaper Feature of the Year in the 2005 Workworld Media Awards, HR Journalist of the Year in the 2006 and 2009 Watson Wyatt Awards for Excellence and the accolade of Young Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2002. He was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters for services to journalism by The University of Wolverhampton in September 2009, and a President’s Medal by the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2010.