Alex Niven (born 18 February 1984, Hexham, Northumberland) is a British writer, poet, editor, academic and musician.

[4] He grew up in Fourstones, a village he has described as "idyllic in childhood" but "a pretty gloomy place to be an adolescent" due to its poor transport links.

[5] He studied at the University of Bristol (BA)[3] and University of Oxford where he was awarded a Master of Studies (MSt) degree followed by a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 2013 with a thesis on modernist poetry, Basil Bunting and Ezra Pound supervised by Ron Bush.

[17] Summarising the book in Pitchfork, Stephen M. Deusner wrote that Niven "makes his arguments with such insight that for a while I did come to think of Oasis as a bunch of leftist revolutionaries reconceiving pop music as a vehicle for working-class liberation.

It was described by Andy Burnham as a "great book",[4] though Stuart Maconie, writing in New Statesman, was critical of Niven's judgement that descriptions of Diane Abbott as "disgusting" and "stupid" by voters during the 2019 United Kingdom general election were influenced by racial prejudice.