Janice Galloway's first novel, The Trick is to Keep Breathing, now widely regarded as a Scottish contemporary classic, was published in 1990 and won the MIND/Allan Lane Book of the Year. Her second novel, Foreign Parts, won the American Academy of Arts and Letters EM Forster Award while her third, Clara, about the tempestuous life of nineteenth-century pianist Clara Wieck Schumann, won the Saltire Award in 2002. Collaborative texts include an opera with Sally Beamish and three cross-discipline works with Anne Bevan, the Orcadian sculptor. Her 'anti-memoir', This is not about me, was published by Granta in September 2008 to universal critical acclaim. She lives in Lanarkshire

"The book reassures that no matter how many times you've done something or been somewhere, the humiliations remain as burning, the pleasure as sharp as ever" Independent "A funny, original, stinging-as-a-nettle, soothing-as-a-dockleaf read" Observer "A carefully observed, caustic portrait of two opposites - one prickly, one plodding - and their troublesome but enduring friendship" New York Times "A pleasure from start to finish" Guardian "Every detail...is described with the accuracy of an X-ray and the urgency of poetry" -- Penelope Mortimer Daily Telegraph