Jo McMillan

I am the author of three novels. My first, Motherland, won an Arts Council Individual Literature Award and was featured on BBC radio. The Happiness Factory – an acclaimed account of men, money and power – draws on the many years I lived in China. The Accidental Immigrants, Finalist for the 2025 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, is a story, witnessed first-hand, of the hostile environment spreading across Europe and what it’s like to be caught up in it.

My writing has appeared in, among others, the Guardian, Granta, Metro, China Review and the Times Higher Education Supplement. I held a post-doc at SOAS and published my PhD as Sex, Science and Morality in China with Routledge.

I have appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and on BBC Radio Scotland, at the Leipzig Book Fair, as a guest of Dulwich Books, and at the Wilderness Festival.

I am a citizen of the UK and Germany and currently live in Berlin.