Curtis Bollington was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, UK in 1955 and raised in Partington, a large overspill estate in Cheshire. He moved to Manchester then London before returning to the north west of England. After spending a year travelling in France with his wife Tania, a musician from Kiev, he returned to live and work in St Ives, Cambridgeshire. His career has included a variety of jobs: motor mechanic, boiler cleaner at a Lancashire colliery, buyer for a West African company and bottom-rung Civil Servant. He has written for almost 30 years as a journalist, magazine editor, copywriter and PR. He is currently unemployed following a redundancy caused by the latest banking crisis. Curtis spent some of his recent free time finishing and publishing his novel 'Hidden Gems', a project that had been on/off for more than 10 years. He is currently working on a new novel, which has the working title 'The Last Straw', another dark comedy, this time about religion, manipulation, death and eating disorders. He hopes to finish this by April 2011.