Moniza Alvi was born in Pakistan and grew up in Hertfordshire.
After working for many years as a secondary school teacher in London, she is now a freelance writer and tutor, and lives in Wymondham, Norfolk with her husband and daughter.
Her first two collections were published by Oxford University Press: The Country at My Shoulder (1993), shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot and Whitbread poetry prizes and selected for the New Generation poetry promotion, and A Bowl of Warm Air (1996).
Her later poetry titles have all been published by Bloodaxe and include Split World: Poems 1990-2005 (2008) and Europa (2008) and At the Time of Partition (2013). Both these last two books were Poetry Book Society Choices shortlisted for T.S. Eliot Prize.
In 2002-04 she was a trainee at the Westminster Pastoral Foundation studying counselling and group analysis.
