Elizabeth Holloway

Dr Elizabeth Holloway (formerly Elizabeth Barrett) is an award-winning poet whose work has been published extensively in journals and anthologies. She is the author of four full-length collections of poetry. Her first book Walking on Tiptoe (Staple, 1998) focuses, in part, on the diagnosis of her son as autistic. Elizabeth received an Arts Council of England New Writers’ award to support the completion of her follow-up collection, The Bat Detector (Wrecking Ball Press, 2005), which continues to explore the experience of parenting an autistic child. In the collection, Elizabeth uses the metaphor of detecting bats to understand the process of communicating with a non-verbal child. The collection led to a collaboration with the violist Robin Ireland who composed original music for a sequence of the poems. Subsequent collections include Walking on Tiptoe and Other Poems (Bluechrome Press, 2007) and A Dart of Green and Blue (Arc Publications, 2010). In 2018, Elizabeth received a Northern Writers award to support work on her future collection, Falling Mother.

Elizabeth has worked as a writer in a variety of settings including schools, community organisations, a prison and radio. She has performed her work at literary events and festivals and between 2000 and 2005 was co-editor of Staple, a journal of poetry and short fiction. Elizabeth worked as a University Lecturer in Education for over thirty years, during which time she developed a special interest in supporting students’ academic writing. Elizabeth also contributes to autism awareness via a range of professional and academic platforms including a blog at dylanandliz.wordpress.com.