Jane Holland

Jane Holland (born 17 November 1966 in Ilford, London) is an English poet, novelist and astrologer. She won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors for her poetry in 1996 and her YA novel Witchstruck, written as Victoria Lamb, won the Romantic Novelists' Association's Young Adult Romantic Novel of the Year Award for 2013. Her sister is the novelist, actress and singer Sarah Holland. She also writes commercial fiction under various pseudonyms, including Betty Walker, JJ Holland, Victoria Lamb, Elizabeth Moss, Beth Good and Hannah Coates. Biography Jane Holland was born on 17 November 1966 in Ilford, London, England, the daughter of the romantic novelist Sheila Ann Mary Coates Holland (Charlotte Lamb) and classical biographer and ex-Times journalist Richard Holland. She moved with her parents to the Isle of Man in 1977, where she lived for 23 years. She has four siblings: the novelist, actress and singer Sarah Holland, Charlotte, Michael and David. She was a snooker player on the WLBSA Women's World Snooker circuit for six years from 1989 to 1995, under her married name Jane Moss and later Jane Holland, and was seeded 24 in the 1994 Women's World Snooker Championship. After leaving snooker, Holland edited the small poetry magazine Blade from 1995 to 1999, and published her first full-length collection of poetry in 1997, The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman, with Bloodaxe Books, followed in 1999 by a first novel, Kissing the Pink, with Sceptre, both these works being inspired by the fall-out following her departure from snooker. She was also one of five young Bloodaxe poets who performed on the New Blood UK Tour of 1997, the others being Roddy Lumsden, Julia Copus, Tracey Herd and Eleanor Brown. Holland was the Warwick Poet Laureate for 2008. She founded the Poets On Fire website and forum, and was a prominent member of the Birmingham-based performance poetry and spoken-word group New October Poets in 2006, when she was named one of the top poetry performers in the West Midlands under the "Six of the Best" scheme. She edited the online arts magazine Horizon Review (Salt Publishing) from 2008 to 2010 and was a commissioning editor at Embrace Books from 2010 to 2011.