Photo copyright: James McNaught
Janice Galloway
Agent: Juliet Pickering
Assistant: Finlay Charlesworth
Biography: Janice Galloway was born in Ayrshire in 1955. Her first novel, THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING (Vintage), now widely regarded as a contemporary Scottish classic, was published in 1990. It was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel, Scottish First Book, Italia Premio Acerbi and Aer Lingus Awards, and won the MIND/Allen Lane Book of the Year. Her second novel was FOREIGN PARTS (Vintage, 1995), which won Te McVitie's Prize. CLARA (Vintage), a fictionalised account of the life of Clara Schumann, was published in 2003 and won the Saltire Book of the Year.
BLOOD and WHERE YOU FIND IT, two collections of short stories, first published in 1991 and 1996 respectively, later became COLLECTED SHORT STORIES (Vintage) in 2009. Janice also wrote two collaborative books of short fiction and poetry with sculptor Anne Bevan, and libretti, poems and a play. Prizes and awards include The American Academy of Arts and Letters EM Forster Award, and Creative Scotland Award. She has written and presented three radio series for BBC Scotland and has been a guest on several BBC Radio 3 shows.
Janice is the author of two works of 'anti-memoir': THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME (Granta, 2010), was shortlisted for The Biographer's Club First Book and won Scottish non-fiction Book of the Year; ALL MADE UP (Granta, 2011) won the SMIT Book of the Year and a Creative Scotland Award.
Her latest book, JELLYFISH (Granta, 2019), is a short story collection exploring sex and sexuality, parenthood, relationships, the connections between generations, death, ambition and loss.
JELLYFISH
Short Stories, 240 pages
Granta, 2019
In sixteen razor-sharp stories, Janice Galloway takes on David Lodge’s assertion that ‘literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children; life’s the other way round’. Her multi-layered tales explore not only sex and sexuality, but parenthood, relationships, the connections between generations, death, ambition and loss. Here is visceral and exhilarating writing about the raw and poignant stuff of life, from one of Scotland’s best loved and most acclaimed authors.
THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING
Literary Fiction, 240 pages
Vintage, 1991
"An account from the inside of a mind cracking up. . . its writing is as taut as a bowstring. From brilliant title to closing injunction, it hums with intelligence, clarity, wit; and, its heroine's struggle for order and meaning seduces our minds, exposes how close we all of us are to insanity. Joy, as Galloway's heroine reluctantly lets us know that she's called, is simply that dangerous step or two nearer the edge" The Listener
THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME
Memoir, 352 pages
Granta, 2008
From her earliest years with a boozy, accident-prone father and a reluctantly pragmatic mother Janice Galloway's grew up as a watcher - careful and vigilant. This is a funny and telling book about the routine dependencies and confusions, hopes and triumphs of childhood: it is also a book about emergence, as slowly, the beginnings of unsuspected rage that pushed the silent girl towards her voice.
ALL MADE UP
Memoir, 320 pages
Granta, 2011
In the second volume of her memoirs, the prize-winning author Janice Galloway reveals how the child introduced in This is Not About Me evolved through her teenage years. Combining visceral descriptions of puberty, sex and school-room politics with the story of a family's secrets,