The poet and novelist Andrew McMillan has been awarded an MBE for services to literature in the New Year’s honours list. He was born in Barnsley in 1988. His debut collection physical was the first poetry collection to win the Guardian First Book award. The collection also won the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection prize, a Somerset Maugham award, an Eric Gregory award and a Northern Writers’ award. His second collection playtime was published by Jonathan Cape in 2018 and won the Polari prize. His third collection pandemonium was published in 2021, and marked a shift into the world of mental health and also into the natural and political world.  

In an interview with the National Centre for Writing he said that “a lot of the poems in the first book physical were rejected by all the poetry magazines, everyone you could think of”.  

In 2022 he co-edited the anthology 100 Queer Poems, which was shortlisted in the British Book Awards.  His debut novel is Pity, set in Barnsley and with a mining background.  

In 2020 Andrew McMillan judged Write Out Loud’s Beyond the Storm poetry competition, which raised funds for the NHS during Covid. He waived his judge’s fee.  

He is senior lecturer at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University, and lives in Manchester.