McAdam was born in Hong Kong 1971 and grew up in Barbados, Denmark and England, as well as in several cities in Canada.

His PhD thesis is a study of translations of Ancient Greek into English in the Seventeenth Century.

McAdam's first novel, Some Great Thing (2004), won the Books in Canada First Novel Award and was a finalist for the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Best First Book), and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the United Kingdom.

His third novel, A Beautiful Truth (2013) won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

[1] McAdam lives in Toronto with poet and former Barzin drummer, Suzanne Hancock.