M Y Alam has worked as a social researcher, ambulance driver and snooker hall manager. Currently he is working on his third novel whilst also teaching and researching at the University of Bradford

His research and teaching interests are mass media, communications and popular culture; race, ethnicity and migration as well as diaspora, identity and nationalism. 

To date he has written two published crime novels, Annie Potts is Dead (1998) and Kilo (2002), as well as a number of short stories which have appeared in various anthologies and magazines.

In 2002 he was selected as a recipient of an Arts Council of England Writer's Award.

M Y Alam was born in 1967 and has lived all his life in Bradford