Mary Jean Chan is a Hong Kong-Chinese poet, lecturer, editor and critic whose debut poetry collection, Flèche (Faber, 2019), won the 2019 Costa Book Award for Poetry. Chan's second book, Bright Fear, was published by Faber & Faber in 2023. In 2023, Chan served as a judge for the Booker Prize.
In 2018, Chan's pamphlet, A Hurry of English, was published by ignitionpress and was chosen as a Poetry Book Society Summer Pamphlet Choice.[4] Chan's debut poetry collection Flèche was published by Faber & Faber (2019). It was chosen as a Poetry Book Society Autumn Recommendation.[5] The book won the Costa Book Award for Poetry in 2019.[6]
In 2019, Chan was named as one of Jackie Kay's 10 Best BAME Writers in Britain, with Kay describing Chan's poetry as "psychologically astute and culturally complex."[7]
Chan's second collection of poems, Bright Fear, was shortlisted for the 2023 Forward Prize for Best Collection,[8] the 2024 International Dylan Thomas Prize and the 2024 Writers' Prize (formerly the Folio Prize).
Chan served as Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes University from 2018 until 2023. Chan is a Departmental Lecturer in Poetry on the MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford and was recently the 2023–24 Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow at the University of Cambridge.
