John Challis was born in London in 1984 and now lives in North Shields. His first pamphlet of poems, The Black Cab, was published by Poetry Salzburg in 2017, and was chosen by New Writing North as a 2019 Read Regional title. His first full collection, The Resurrectionists, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2021, and highly commended in the 2021 Forward Prizes for Poetry.

His poems have appeared on BBC Radio 4, as well as in many journals and anthologies including Ambit, Clinic, Magma, The North, Poetry London, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Forward Book of Poetry 2022 (Faber, 2021), The Rialto, Stand, and The Land of Three Rivers (Bloodaxe Books, 2017). His poem ‘Thames’ was chosen as poem-of-the-week by Carol Rumens and published in The Guardian in September 2021.

In 2012 New Writing North awarded him a Northern Promise Award, and in 2015 he won a Pushcart Prize for his poem ‘Advertising’, the same year that the Poetry Trust selected John as one of the Aldeburgh Eight. He was awarded an Authors’ Foundation grant from the Society of Authors in 2021 to help him write his second collection of poetry.

John has held residences with Keats Shelley House in Rome, was a poet-in-residence with the Northern Poetry Library, and writes reviews and essays, most recently for Wild Court, PN Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and The Poetry School. He is currently writer-in-residence at the National Trust property, Seaton Delaval Hall.

John completed a PhD in Creative Writing in 2015 at Newcastle University. His thesis was titled: The Knowledge, a collection of poetry, and The Poem Noir: Film Noir in Contemporary Poetry’.

He currently works as a Research Associate and Associate Lecturer at Newcastle University.