Holland was born on 17 November 1966 in
Ilford,
London, England, the daughter of the romantic novelist
Sheila Ann Mary Coates Holland (Charlotte Lamb) and classical biographer and former
Times journalist Richard Holland. She moved with her parents to the
Isle of Man in 1977, where she lived for 23 years. She has four siblings: the novelist, actress and singer
Sarah Holland, Charlotte, Michael and David. She was a snooker player on the WLBSA Women's World Snooker circuit for six years from 1989 to 1995, under her married name Jane Moss and later Jane Holland, and was seeded 24 in the
1994 Women's World Snooker Championship. After leaving snooker, Holland edited the small poetry magazine
Blade from 1995 to 1999, and published her first full-length collection of poetry in 1997,
The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman, with
Bloodaxe Books, followed in 1999 by a first novel,
Kissing the Pink, with Sceptre, both these works being inspired by the fall-out following her departure from snooker. [https://snookerzone.co.uk/kissing-the-pink-the-trials-and-tribulations-of-being-a-female-snooker-player-in-a-mans-world/ She was also one of five young Bloodaxe poets who performed on the New Blood UK Tour of 1997, the others being
Roddy Lumsden,
Julia Copus, Tracey Herd and Eleanor Brown. Holland was the Warwick Poet Laureate for 2008. She founded the Poets On Fire website and forum, and was a prominent member of the Birmingham-based performance poetry and spoken-word group New October Poets in 2006, when she was named one of the top poetry performers in the West Midlands under the "Six of the Best" scheme. She edited the online arts magazine
Horizon Review (Salt Publishing) from 2008 to 2010 and was a
commissioning editor at Embrace Books from 2010 to 2011. Holland's first collection was in a mainstream British tradition, generally as a "nature" poet rather than an urban stylist, citing
Ted Hughes as a major early influence. Recent work includes a long narrative poem sequence written in the voice of
Boudicca and a translation of the
Anglo-Saxon poem, "
The Wanderer".
Boudicca & Co. was published by
Salt Publishing in 2006.
Camper Van Blues was published by Salt in 2008. Two poetry pamphlets were also published in 2008:
The Lament of the Wanderer [Heaventree Press, a new translation of the eponymous Anglo-Saxon poem, and
On Warwick (Nine Arches Press), a collection of poems written during her year as Warwick Poet Laureate, including the long experimental poem
On Warwick Castle. Now a full-time fiction writer, she has written numerous bestselling thrillers as Jane Holland, including her most popular novel to date,
Girl Number One [Thomas & Mercer], which was a UK Kindle #1 Bestseller in December 2015, as well as a string of romances, historicals and contemporary novels variously under the pseudonyms Betty Walker, JJ Holland, Beth Good, Victoria Lamb, Elizabeth Moss, and others. ==Works==