| Stephan Collishaw | |
|---|---|
| Born | Stephan Collishaw 1968 Nottingham, England |
| Occupation | Author, School Teacher |
| Nationality | British |
| Genres | Story |
| Notable work(s) | The Last Girl Amber |
Stephan Collishaw is an author from Nottinghamshire.
Collishaw was born at Nottingham City Hospital.[1] He wrote his first novel at the age of 16, an unpublished work he subsequently described as "unremittingly awful".[1] He studied at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he wrote several other substantial unpublished works, and based on an interest in history and literature, decided to become a teacher in 1991.[1] On a whim, he relocated to Vilnius in 1995, where he met and married a Lithuanian woman[1] named Marja, who had been teaching him the Lithuanian language.[2] Marja already had two daughters from a prior relationship.[2] The family lived in Palma de Mallorca for two years, where Marja gave birth to Collishaw's son Lucas,[2] and then the family relocated to Nottinghamshire in 2001.[1] By this time, he had written a total of three unpublished novels, and at his wife's urging, began taking his writing more seriously.[1]
His first professional novel, The Last Girl, about an elderly and impoverished poet in Vilnius, was completed in 2001[1] and published in 2003. In a favorable review for The Guardian, Julie Myerson described it as "astoundingly complex for a first novel", and also commented favorably on the reserved and un-flashy tone of Collishaw's prose.[3] He followed with a second novel, Amber, in 2004. Also set in Vilnius, it was inspired in part by (and contained numerous references to) Christopher Marlowe's play Tamburlaine, which had been a favorite of Collishaw's as a young man.[2]
Stephan also edited Any Place But Home which contains personal histories of seven Lithuanians who settled in England's East Midlands in the 1940s.[4]