Faber bags Chan's second 'powerful' poetry collection

Faber has landed Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan, the second collection from the Costa Prize-winning poet.

Following on from their award-winning debut, Flèche (2019), Chan’s "gleaming new collection fearlessly explores intertwined themes of queer identity, multilingualism and postcolonial legacy: interrogating acts of Covid racism, instances of queerphobia and the hegemony of the English language," the synopsis reads.

Matthew Hollis, editor, acquired world English language rights from Emma Paterson at Aitken Alexander. The collection will be published on 3rd August 2023.

The publisher said: "Bright Fear remains deeply attuned to moments of beauty, tenderness and grace. It asks how we might find a home within our own bodies, in places both distant and near, and in the ‘constructed space’ of the poem. The contemplative central sequence, Ars Poetica, traces the radically healing and transformative role of poetry during the poet’s teenage and adult years, culminating in a reconciliation of tongues. Throughout, Chan offers us new and galvanising ways to ‘withstand the quotidian tug-of-war between brightness, terror and love’".

Hollis and fellow editor Lavinia Singer said: "We are delighted to be publishing this brave and powerful new collection from Mary Jean Chan. Chan is the most generous of writers, mining personal and collective experiences to pass on their hard-won discoveries. We look forward to sharing with readers all that the pages of Bright Fear bestow: resolve in uncertainty, solace in sorrow and, above all, trust in language and the light it emits."

Flèche, which won the 2019 Costa Book Award for Poetry, was shortlisted in 2020 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 2021 Lambda Literary Award. Chan recently co-edited 100 Queer Poems (Vintage) with Andrew McMillan and is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing (Poetry) at Oxford Brookes University. Chan was born and raised in Hong Kong and lives in Oxford.