Photo © Pan Macmillan

CHINA MIÉVILLE was born in 1972 in Norwich, England, and grew up in north-west London. Listing Jane Gaskell, M. John Harrison, Michael de Larrabeiti, Angela Carter, H.P. Lovecraft, Joan Aiken, Dambudzo Marechera, Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Moorcock, Charlotte Brontë, Mervyn Peake and Gene Wolfe amongst his literary influences, China is often associated with the so-called (and now dead) "New Weird" movement, the usefulness, specificities and sheer annoyingness of which is still debated. Among a very few nerds.

His first novel, King Rat, appeared in 1998, since when he has published such critically acclaimed and popular novels as Perdido Street Station (2000), The Scar (2002), Iron Council (2004), Un Lun Dun (2007), The City & the City (2009), Kraken (2010) and Embassytown (2011). His short fiction has been collected in 'Looking for Jake' and Other Stories (2005), and he has also written for role-playing games and comics.

China is also active in left-wing politics, and stood for the British Parliament in 2001 as a member of the Socialist Alliance. He has been a research fellow at Birkbeck Law School, and his PhD thesis was published in 2005 as Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law, and with Mark Bould he co-edited the non-fiction study Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction (2009). He is currently Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Warwick University.

He has been quoted as saying; "I'm not a leftist trying to smuggle in my evil message by the nefarious means of fantasy novels. I'm a science fiction and fantasy geek. I love this stuff. And when I write my novels, I'm not writing them to make political points. I'm writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism..."

China has won the Locus Award four times, the Arthur C. Clarke Award three times and the British Fantasy Award twice, along with the British Science Fiction, Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

"I'm desperately excited to be Master of Ceremonies at World Fantasy Convention 2013," he reveals. "I'm so excited that even the belated discovery that this wasn't the kind of MC they have in Hip Hop didn't undermine my delight. I have cracked out my suit.

"There couldn't be anywhere more appropriate than Brighton, what with the Gothic and uncanny traditions of the British coast (as M.R. James knew only too well). How better could we celebrate the fantastic in all its aspects than with the melancholy spectre of the charred pier skeleton glowering at us from the freezing water? Note how the linguistic appurtenances of the English Riviera are already transmogrified by our approach into something more baleful, more terrifying than their original formulators had in mind. What monsters demand these actions of us? Kiss me quick, we hear, coming at us in breaths. Squeeze me slow."

•  China Miéville Interview