Tiffany Atkinson was born in Berlin in 1972 to an army family, and lived in Germany, Cyprus and Britain. After studying English at Birmingham University she started a PhD in 1994 at Cardiff University in Critical Theory, researching Contemporary Writing and Theories of the Body. In 2014, she was appointed Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.

Tiffany won the BBC Radio Young Poet of the Year Competition in 1993 and 1994, and the Ottakar’s and Faber Poetry Competition in 2000. Her first collection, Kink and Particle (Seren, 2006) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and winner of the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. It was also a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and was shortlisted for the Glen Dimplex New Writer’s Award. Her second collection, Catulla et al (Bloodaxe 2011) was described by Patrick McGuinness (The Guardian) as showing "Atkinson's gift for unsettling conceits and reworking everyday life into a contorted, surreal folklore". Her third, So Many Moving Parts was published by Bloodaxe in 2014 and won the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year). She is also the editor of "The Body: A Reader" (Palgrave 2004). Her poetry is featured on Poetry International and appears regularly in journals and anthologies, including "Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poets" ed. Roddy Lumsden (Bloodaxe 2010) and "Women’s Work: Modern Women Poets Writing In English" ed. Amy Wack and Eva Salzman (Seren 2009).