JELLYFISH BY JANICE GALLOWAY SHORTLISTED FOR THE SALTIRE FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR

JELLYFISH, by Janice Galloway, has been shortlisted for the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award. Widely regarded as Scotland’s most prestigious book awards, the Saltire Society Literary Awards champion and support literary achievement. With awards for Fiction, Non- Fiction, First Book, History, Poetry, Research and an overall Book of the Year Award they aim to celebrate as broad a range of Scottish writing as possible. The final award ceremony will be in Edinburgh on the 26th of November, during Scottish Book Week.

JELLYFISH is a collection of short stories, published in the UK by Freight Books. Three stories from the collection were recently broadcast by BBC Radio 4, and the book has already been longlisted for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Prize 2015.

In this sparkling and powerful new collection, Janice Galloway takes on David Lodge's assertion – ‘Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children; life's the other way round’ and scent-marks her multi-layered fiction with what she believes to be the greater truth. These are razor sharp tales of two of the most powerful human experiences, by a master of short fiction.

Janice Galloway was born in Ayrshire in 1955. She is the author of three novels, two collections of short stories and, most recently, two memoirs. She has won and been shortlisted for numerous literary prizes, including the Whitbread First Novel and Scottish Book of the Year. She has been writer in residence to four Scottish prisons, Research Fellow to the British Library, resident at Jura Distillery, and was recently the first Fellow in Residence at the University of Otago in New Zealand.

Praise for JELLYFISH:

 ‘Foreboding floats through the fourteen tales … Reminiscent of Sylvia Plath in its black humour and visceral imagery … These deft short stories show why publishers should have more faith in the form … Exquisite similes and witty metaphors rise up and sting the senses like the eponymous jellyfish. With this electrifying volume Galloway proves herself a truly powerful writer who deserves to be much better known.’ – The Independent

 ‘An exquisite short-story collection … Previously very much a city writer, here the natural world encroaches on Galloway’s work from the title onwards, both indifferent and essential.’ – The Guardian

 'This is a short story collection to savour, by one of the foremost Scottish writers of her generation.' – Irish Times