Biography of Matt Haig

Matt Haig is a contemporary fiction and nonfiction writer. Born in Sheffield, UK in 1975, Haig grew up in Newark, Nottinghamshire, which he found much tougher than Sheffield. He spent a great deal of time at the movies and in the library, which he saw as his safe space; he told The Guardian, “Free from the well-intended prescription of teachers, books became a source of joy, comfort and friendship, rather than something to do me good, like literary All-Bran. In the library I could experience the magic paradox of books: that they were a place of escape and return. That by being taken to another world, you could find yourself.”

Haig went on to study at Hull University and Leeds University. He ran his own online marketing company for a number of years before shifting his primary focus to writing. He is married to Andrea Semple and has two children. He says of religion, "I get a bit jealous of people with faith in an answer or answers, but I'm in-between, open-minded. So much of human life is about a search, whether it's a religious search for meaning or a more general existential search.”

When he was 24 years old he suffered a mental breakdown. He told The Church Times about this initial panic attack that started the breakdown: “I did not yet know of the strange physical effects that depression and anxiety would create. I just thought I was about to die. And then my heart started to go. And then I started to go. I sank fast, falling in to a new claustrophobic and suffocating reality. And it would be way over a year before I would feel anything like even half-normal again…There was no relief. I wanted to be dead. That's not quite right: I didn't want to be dead, I just didn't want to be alive." He says he has had 22 separate bouts of depression since this breakdown, but has learned to manage these tough periods. At age 46 he was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder, which the New York Times notes in a profile has “helped him better understand himself, and the habits and structures he needs to thrive.”

His novels include The Last Family in England (2004); The Dead Fathers Club (2006); The Possession of Mr Cave (2008); The Radleys (2010); The Humans (2013); and The Midnight Library (2020). The Midnight Library was shortlisted for the 2021 British Book Awards "Fiction Book of the Year" and adapted into a ten-episode radio series for BBC Radio 4. He is also the author of the children's book Shadow Forest (2007) as well as the memoir How to Stay Alive (2015), which describes his struggles to cope with depression. He also writes for various news publications, including The Guardian and The Independent.