Irfan
Master

Irfan Master is an author of novels, short stories, poetry and plays. His debut novel for young adults, A Beautiful Lie (Bloomsbury, 2011), was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize and the Branford Boase Award for debut authors, and translated into ten languages. His second novel, Out of Heart (Hot Key, 2017), was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal.

A selection of short fiction and poetry has appeared in literary journals and anthologies, including Meniscus (2025), OFFAL (2024) — where his prose poetry piece Looking for George used haibun and Bashō to follow a homeless man's mythical disappearance — and Cuckoo Cage (Comma Press, 2022). Further work has appeared in Resist (Comma Press, 2020), on the death of Blair Peach and the Southall riots, The Good Journal (2019), and The Bare Lit Anthology (Brain Mill Press, 2017), where his experimental verse story Samo as Everybody Else drew on Basquiat and jazz poetry.

He has worked with English PEN, the British Council and the Arvon Foundation, and has taught creative writing and English literature at universities in the UK and Australia. He is currently a PhD candidate and Associate Lecturer at the University of Canberra, where his teaching focuses on postcolonial fiction and contemporary literary form.