James "Jim" Crace is an award-winning English writer. He was born on 1 March 1946 in Hertfordshire. Known for his work as a novelist, playwright, and short story writer, Crace has made significant contributions to literature.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999. Crace's first novel, Continent, was published in 1986. His novel Signals of Distress won the 1994 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. Quarantine won the Whitbread Novel Award in 1997 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in the same year. Being Dead won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999.

Harvest was shortlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize, won the 2013 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the 2015 International Dublin Literary Award. Crace received the American Academy of Arts and Letters E. M. Forster Award in 1996 and was awarded a Windham–Campbell Literature Prize in 2015.

Crace grew up in Forty Hill, an area at the far northern point of Greater London, close to Enfield. He attended Enfield Grammar School and later studied for a degree at the Birmingham College of Commerce, now part of Birmingham City University, as an external student of the University of London. After securing a BA (Hons) in English Literature in 1968, he traveled overseas with the UK organization Voluntary Services Overseas.