Janice Galloway


1955 -

Writer for the Scottish postmodernist school. Born in Saltcoats (North Ayrshire), Galloway attended Ardrossan Academy before studying Music and English at the University of Glasgow. She secured employment as an English teacher at Garnock Academy in Kilbirnie but left education to concentrate on her writing in 1989. Her first novel The Trick is To Keep Breathing (1989) was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and won the MIND Book of the Year / Allen Lane Award and a Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Her second novel Foreign Parts (1994) won the McVitie's Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year and Clara (2002), based on the life of German pianist Clara Schumann, won the Saltire Book of the Year Award. This Is Not About Me (2008) describes her difficult childhood, and her autobiography continues in All Made Up (2011).

Her collections of short stories include Blood (1991), which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize and the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award, and Where You Find It (1996).

Her other work includes three series for BBC Radio Scotland. She served as Times Literary Supplement Research Fellow to the British Library (1999) and works extensively with musicians and visual artists.


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