Janice Galloway Biography

Scottish writer, born in Ayrshire, educated at Glasgow University; she has worked mainly as a teacher. Her first novel, The Trick is to Keep Breathing (1989), focuses on Joy Stone, a young drama teacher rendered almost insane by her lover's accidental death; written in a distinctive fragmentary style with an unusual use of typography, it powerfully evokes the suffering of a woman traumatized by grief. Galloway's talent for experimentation is further displayed in the short stories collected in Blood (1991), and in her novel Foreign Parts (1994), which follows Cassie and Rona, two Scottish welfare workers, through Northern France on a motoring holiday; interwoven with photographs of Cassie's past loves and extracts from travel guides, the novel is both a compassionate exploration of a friendship tested to its limits and a witty account of travelling abroad. The stories collected in Where You Find It (1996) are unsentimental examinations of the diversity of love.