About
Mary Jean Chan is the author of the poetry collection Flèche, published by Faber & Faber (2019) and Faber USA (2020). Flèche won the 2019 Costa Book Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, the Jhalak Prize, the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize and a Lambda Literary Award. An Italian translation of Flèche by Giorgia Sensi was published by Interno Poesia in 2023.
Chan's second book, Bright Fear (Faber, 2023), is a Guardian Best Poetry Book of 2023 and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Writers' Prize and the International Dylan Thomas Prize. Chan co-edited the anthology 100 Queer Poems (Vintage, 2022) with Andrew McMillan and co-wrote the pamphlet Siblings (Monitor Books, 2024). In 2023, Chan served as a judge for the Booker Prize. A recent Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow at the University of Cambridge, Chan is a Departmental Lecturer in Poetry on the MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford and a Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford.
Poetry
Shortlisted for the 2023 Forward Prize
for Best Collection, the 2024 Writers' Prize
& the 2024 International Dylan Thomas Prize
A Poetry Book Society Recommendation
Reviews
Thoughtful clear-sightedness abounds in Bright Fear...it is exhilarating to read a poet so sure of their intent. – The New Statesman
Reading Bright Fear is like testing the blade of a knife and finding it exquisitely sharp. – The Guardian
Written with a quiet intimacy, Mary Jean Chan's second collection hums by your ear with gentle, inviting and formally inventive poetry. – The Dylan Thomas Prize
Winner of the 2019 Costa Poetry Award
A Poetry Book Society Recommendation
Reviews
One of those rare poets who leave you looking up with a sense that you can engage even the smallest part of the world around you with a much greater intensity. – PN Review
Extraordinary, brilliant and...beautifully governed by formal rigour and literary excellence. – The Poetry Review
As governing metaphor and organising principle...the sport [of fencing] provides enlivening strategies for the poetic realisation of loss and rebellion. – The Guardian
Prose
Selected Publications
Review of English Studies (2022)
Guardian Review (2022)
Guardian Books (2021)
Journal of British & Irish Innovative Poetry (2020)
Guardian Books (2019)
Journal of American Studies (2018)
Events
2024
20 Jan: Reading with Victoria Adukwei Bulley & Momtaza Mehri, Blackwell's, Oxford
31 Jan: Reading, Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge
8 Feb: Reading with Isobel Dixon, Shehzar Doja & others, The Glasgow Network of Poets
24 Feb: Reading, Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan, Magdalene Poetry Society, Cambridge
29 Feb: Reading, Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan with Enora Lessinger, Daunt, Oxford