MARY JEAN CHAN
About
Mary Jean Chan is the author of the poetry collection Flèche, published by Faber & Faber (2019). Flèche won the 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 collection Bright Fear (Faber, 2023) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2023 Forward Prize for Best Collection. Chan edited the acclaimed anthology 100 Queer Poems (Vintage, 2022) with Andrew McMillan and recently served as a judge for the 2023 Booker Prize. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Chan is the 2023-24 Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow at the University of Cambridge.
Winner of the Costa Poetry Award
A Poetry Book Society Recommendation
Reviews
Extraordinary, brilliant and searingly honest...beautifully governed by formal rigour and literary excellence. – The Poetry Review
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
As governing metaphor and organising principle...the sport [of fencing] provides enlivening strategies for the poetic realisation of loss and rebellion. – The Guardian
Chan has picked a perfect title, one that is as expansive and evocative as the poems that it encompasses. – The Hong Kong Review of Books
