Toby Litt

Toby Litt (born 1968) is an English writer and academic based at the University of Southampton.

Life Litt was born in Ampthill, England, in 1968. He was educated at Bedford Modern School, read English at Worcester College, Oxford, and studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, where he was taught by Malcolm Bradbury. although his work since then has met with mixed reviews, one reviewer in The Guardian writing that his novel I Play the Drums in a Band Called Okay "goes on ... and on, and on. There is plenty of story here, but little plot, and no tension."

Litt edited the 13th edition of New Writing (the British Council's annual anthology of the finest contemporary writing in fiction, non-fiction and poetry) and is known for naming his books in alphabetical order. He is currently an associate professor in creative writing at the University of Southampton, and led the campaign to get Arvind Mehrotra elected as the Oxford Professor of Poetry following Ruth Padel's resignation. In 2011, he took part in the Bush Theatre's Sixty-Six Books project, for which he wrote a piece based upon a book of the King James Bible.

Litt was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023.