Name Matt Haig | Role Novelist | |
 | ||
Awards Nestle Smarties Book Prize Nominations Edgar Award for Best Novel, Goodreads Choice Awards Best Science Fiction Books The Humans, The Radleys, Shadow Forest, The Dead Fathers Club, The Last Family in England Profiles | ||
How to be a writer by matt haig
Matt Haig (born 3 July 1975) is a British novelist and journalist. He has written both fiction and non-fiction for children and adults often in the speculative fiction genre.
Contents
- How to be a writer by matt haig
- Advice for a human from the humans by matt haig
- Early life
- Career
- Personal life
- Novels
- Non fiction
- References
Advice for a human from the humans by matt haig
Early life
Haig was born on 3 July 1975 in Sheffield. He studied English and History at the University of Hull.
Career
Haig is the author of both fiction and non-fiction for children and adults often in the speculative fiction genre. His work of non-fiction, Reasons to Stay Alive, was a number one Sunday Times bestseller and was in the UK top 10 for 46 weeks. His bestselling children's novel, A Boy Called Christmas, is currently being adapted for film, produced by Studio Canal and Blueprint Pictures.
His novels are often dark and quirky takes on family life. The Last Family in England retells Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 with the protagonists as dogs. His second novel Dead Fathers Club is based on Hamlet, telling the story of an introspective 11-year-old dealing with the recent death of his father and the subsequent appearance of his father's ghost. His third adult novel, The Possession of Mr Cave, deals with an obsessive father desperately trying to keep his teenage daughter safe. His children's novel, Shadow Forest, is a fantasy that begins with the horrific death of the protagonists' parents. It won the Nestlé Children's Book Prize in 2007. He followed it with the sequel, Runaway Troll, in 2008.
Haig's vampire novel The Radleys, was published in 2011. In 2013, he published The Humans. It is the story of an alien who takes the identity of a university lecturer whose work in mathematics threatens the stability of the planet who must also cope with the home life which accompanies his task.
In 2017, Haig published How to Stop Time, a novel about a man who appears to be 40 but has, in fact, lived for more than 400 years and has met Shakespeare, Captain Cook and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In an interview with The Guardian, Haig revealed the book has been optioned by StudioCanal films, and Benedict Cumberbatch had been "lined up to star" in the film adaptation.
Personal life
Haig is married to Andrea Semple; they have two children. He resides in Brighton, U.K.. He homeschools his children, and he is an atheist. He suffered from major depressive disorder at the age of 24.