Mary Jean Chan

Mary Jean Chan (b. 1990) is the author of Flèche, published by Faber & Faber (2019) and Faber USA (2020). Flèche won the 2019 Costa Book Award for Poetry and was named as a Book of the Year in The Guardian, The Irish Times and The White Review. In 2020, Flèche was shortlisted for multiple literary prizes, including the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, the Jhalak Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize. In 2021, Flèche was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. In 2018, Chan was selected as the winner of the UK’s Poetry Society Geoffrey Dearmer Prize. They were shortlisted for the Forward Prizes in the Best Single Poem category in 2017 and 2019, and received an Eric Gregory Award in 2019 for a collection by a poet under the age of 30, awarded by the Society of Authors. Their reviews have appeared in The Guardian Review, with literary criticism published in The Journal of American Studies and The Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry. In Spring 2020, Chan served as guest co-editor with Will Harris at The Poetry Review. Their second poetry collection, Bright Fear, is forthcoming from Faber in 2023. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Chan is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing (Poetry) at Oxford Brookes University and serves as a supervisor on the MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford.

© Photo credit: Adrian Pope

Awards

• 2020: Flèche was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, the Jhalak Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize
• 2019: Flèche won the 2019 Costa Book Award for Poetry and was a Book of the Year in The Guardian, The Irish Times and The White Review
• 2019: Received an Eric Gregory Award
• 2019: Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem
• 2018: Won the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize
• 2017: Second in the 2017 National Poetry Competition
• 2017: Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem

Publications

• Flèche (poetry), Faber & Faber, 2019