About
Mary Jean Chan is the author of the debut 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 Dylan Thomas Prize. Chan co-edited 100 Queer Poems (Vintage, 2022) with Andrew McMillan and co-wrote Siblings (Monitor Books, 2024). In 2023, Chan served as a judge for the Booker Prize. A recent Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow, Chan is a Departmental Lecturer in Poetry on the Master of Studies in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford and a Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford. Chan is currently a judge for the 2025 Dylan Thomas Prize.
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
