Thomas McMullan
Novelist, Short-story writer
About
Thomas McMullan is an award-winning novelist and short-story writer. He is the author of The Last Good Man (Bloomsbury, 2020), which won the 2021 Betty Trask prize from the Society of Authors, and Groundwater (Bloomsbury, 2025). His short stories have been published in the Dublin Review, 3:AM Magazine, Lighthouse, and Best British Short Stories, amongst other outlets.
His practice also encompasses scripts, both for stage and film, and narrative design for video games. For the latter, he was the lead writer on Rollerdrome (Roll7, 2022), which won the 2023 BAFTA for Best British Game. This interdisciplinary side of his work extends also into nonfiction, often encompassing coverage of other artforms. His critical and journalistic work has appeared in publications including Granta, the Guardian, the Observer, the Times Literary Supplement, and BBC News. He regularly reviews visual art exhibitions for frieze and ArtReview, and has written about cinema for Sight and Sound.
He is dedicated to teaching and mentoring others, and enjoys collaborating on various projects with artists, musicians and actors. He has recently explored acting as part of his own creative practice, curious about the parallels between shaping layers of communication in text and expressing gesture and speech through the body. For his next project, he is working on a new novel.