Matthew Hollis


Matthew Hollis is an English author, editor, professor, and poet, currently living in London, England.

Career and background

He was born in Norwich, the son of politician Patricia Hollis and academic Martin Hollis. He has studied at the universities of Edinburgh and York. He presently lives in London, England, writing as well as serving as a tutor for the London Poetry School and working as an editor at Faber and Faber. He is a member of the international educational and cultural enhancement organisation the British Council, taking part in the Arts Council's 'First Lines' program in 2001.
Hollis has published a variety of written works. After its shortlisting for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, his first full-length collection Ground Water was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and for the Whitbread Poetry Award; Ground Water was also a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Hollis is perhaps best known for the 2011 non-fiction book Now All Roads Lead to France, a critically acclaimed biography of seminal English poet Edward Thomas. The work won the 2011 H. W. Fisher Best First Biography Prize as well as the 2011 Costa Book Award for 'Best Biography'. The judges for the latter commented: "Dramatic and engrossing. A brilliant biography that moved us all."