My name’s Mark Blacklock. I’m a writer, lecturer and researcher. My debut novel, I’M JACK, was published by Granta in early 2015. My most recent novel, HINTON, was published in hardback by Granta in April 2020. My edited collection of the non-fiction of J.G. Ballard is forthcmoning in 2023 from MIT Press. I have various collaborative projects on the go and am always up for commissions. For all fiction inquiries please contact my agent, Anna Webber at United Agents.
Since 2015 I’ve worked in the English Department at Birkbeck College, University of London, and I was a student there from 2005 (you can read a blog post about the state of play at Birkbeck here). I convened the MA in Cultural and Critical Studies and taught courses on New Directions in Cultural Studies and Science Fiction, among others, during that time. I now teach on the MA Creative Writing.
Before becoming a crusty academic, I was a freelance journalist, editor and researcher for over a decade and have darkened the halls of many publications and institutions in that time (News of the World Sunday Magazine, anyone?) but I started out at Bizarre magazine, for whom I was once a human cannonball. More recently, I’ve published bits and pieces with The Fence, which is my favourite magazine right now, including this investigation which is the most significant piece of journalism I’ve ever worked on. I try every year to pitch something to the London Review of Books (they even replied last year) and to propose a radio feature to BBC R3. One of these days.
I have various other odd gigs: I’m a Royal Literary Fund fellow in the Law School at Leeds from 2021-23; I’m a judge for Spread the Word’s Early Career Bursaries, generously endowed by a former Birkbeck student, Sam Berwick; I’m co-editing a literary journal and podcast sound-collage called Offal dedicated to formally experimental offcuts; and I’m doing some writing and research for a soon-to-be-announced art project.
I was, honestly, a contestant and winner on Who Wants to be a Millionnaire.
If you want to get in touch directly, please email: mjblacklock [@] gmail.com. I’d be interested to hear from you, particularly if you have something that could work in Offal. I’m on twitter @drblacklock but I’m weaning myself off it.
Some mugshots
markblacklock.com 