Peter Hobbs was born in 1973, and grew up in Cornwall and in Yorkshire. His first novel, The Short Day Dying, was published in 2005 by Faber and Faber. It won a Betty Trask Award, and was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award, The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. It was followed in 2006 by a collection of short stories, I Could Ride All Day In My Cool Blue Train (also Faber). In 2012, In the Orchard, the Swallows was published by Faber and in 2017 he co-authored Sex and Death: Stories (Faber) with Sarah Hall. He lives in London.