Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby is an English novelist, essayist, and screenwriter born in 1957 in Redhill, Surrey, whose books and films explore obsessive male fandom, popular music, suburban marriage, and the awkward edges of contemporary middle-class English life. He is one of the most widely read British novelists of his generation.

The son of businessman Sir Derek Hornby and a secretary, he was educated at Maidenhead Grammar School and at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he read English. He worked briefly as a teacher and then as a freelance journalist, contributing music and television criticism to The Sunday Times, The Independent, and the New Yorker.

His football-supporter memoir Fever Pitch (1992), centred on his lifelong devotion to Arsenal, won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and was filmed twice, in a 1997 British version with Colin Firth and a 2005 American baseball-themed adaptation with Drew Barrymore. He followed it with the novels High Fidelity (1995) and About a Boy (1998), both of which were adapted into successful films starring John Cusack and Hugh Grant respectively.

Hornby has continued to alternate fiction, screenwriting, and essays. His later novels include How to Be Good (2001), A Long Way Down (2005), Funny Girl (2014), and Just Like You (2020); his screenplay for An Education (2009) was nominated for an Academy Award, and his adaptation of Brooklyn (2015) earned him a second Oscar nomination. He also writes the long-running monthly reading column Stuff I've Been Reading for the magazine The Believer.

The name Nick is an English short form of Nicholas, from Greek meaning victory of the people; he wears it as a male given name.