Mick was born in Great Harwood, Lancashire. He studied drama at Dartington College of Arts, Devon and was a singer in a band through his 20s. Between 1991-92 he attended the Creative Writing MA course at the University of East Anglia where his tutors were Malcolm Bradbury, Rose Tremain and Michele Roberts.

His first novel, The Underground Man, was written in Cambridge and London, whilst Jackson worked part-time as a special needs assistant and is a fictional version of the life of the fifth Duke of Portland, an English eccentric, renowned for creating a network of tunnels under his estate at Welbeck Abbey. It was originally published by Picador in 1997 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award and won the Royal Society of Authors’ First Novel Award.

He has since written three more novels, a novella, a collection of stories and an e-book, all published by Faber and Faber. His latest novel will be published in 2015 and was supported in part by a grant from The Sasakawa Foundation.

He has written and directed prize-winning short films and directed a documentary for BBC2 (link to ‘Silvering Up’). His feature-length script, Roman Road, was produced by Zenith and broadcast on ITV in 2004. He has since adapted two of his novels, and is currently working on an original feature-length screenplay.

In recent years, Mick has set up writing residencies at the Science Museum, London and the Booth Museum of Natural History, Brighton as a way of providing time and space to research less conventional projects.

As well as developing a series of short fictions for a fourth collection, he is also working on a book for pre-school children.

Between 2012-14 he was a RLF Writing Fellow at the University of Sussex.