Jane Harris

Harris's second novel, Gillespie and I, was also well-received with excellent reviews online (e.g. in Kirkus Reviews) and in the press, including The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The TLS, The Daily Mail, The Independent and Scotland on Sunday. It is a chilling tale, largely set in the late 19th century, and involving anonymous letters, sleazy journalism and a notorious court case.

Harris's third novel, Sugar Novel, was published in October 2017, again to critical acclaim with widespread positive reviews online and in many publications including The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Express, The Irish Times, The Glasgow Herald, The Spectator and The Daily Mail.

Ascension was commissioned for BBC Radio 3's The Verb. Jane read the story when it was broadcast live from the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House on 6 May 2011.

Harris was nominated for the British Book Awards Newcomer of the Year (2007) and the Southbank Show/Times Breakthrough Award (2007), and was chosen as a Waterstones Author of the Future, also in 2007.

Harris's best-selling debut was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2007. It was Waterstones book of the month and Faber & Faber's lead debut fiction title for spring 2006(with its biggest ever initial print run for a first book).

In 2001, Going Down (funded by Working Title Films) was also nominated for a BAFTA and won prizes for Best Drama at the BBC Short Film Festival, Best Short at the Angers Film Festival and was runner-up in the Turner Classic Movie Awards.

Harris has written a number of award-winning short films, culminating in 2000 when Bait (funded by Film4 Productions) was BAFTA-nominated. The film won the Kodak Award and Best Short at the Newport Film Festival in the US.

Harris was shortlisted in 1999 and 2000 for the BBC's Dennis Potter Awards.

Her short stories have received a number of prizes including the Penguin/Observer Newspaper Short Story Award, 1993. She was awarded an Arts Council writer's grant in 2000.

After UEA, she completed a two-year stint as the Arts Council of Great Britain Writer-in-Residence at HM Prison Durham (1992–4). Following this, Harris worked as both a script and novel reader, and a script editor for film companies and The Literary Consultancy. She also taught creative writing for many years, principally at the University of East Anglia.

On her return to Glasgow, several of her short stories were published in anthologies. In the early 1990s, she was a regular panelist on STV's Scottish Books program.

Harris was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and spent her early childhood there before her parents moved in 1965 to Glasgow, Scotland. Upon leaving school, she studied English Literature and Drama at the University of Glasgow, then trained as an actress at the East 15 Acting School in London.

Jane Harris (born 1961) is a British writer of fiction and screenplays. Her novels have been published in over 20 territories worldwide and translated into many different languages (see The Observations and Gillespie and I). Her most recent work is the novel Sugar Money which has been shortlisted for several literary prizes.

Martinique, 1765, and brothers Emile and Lucien are charged by their French master, Father Cleophas, with a mission. They must return to Grenada, the island they once called home, and smuggle back the 42 slaves claimed by English invaders at the hospital plantation in Fort Royal. While Lucien, barely in his teens, sees the trip as a great adventure, the older and worldlier Emile has no illusions about the dangers they will face. But with no choice other than to obey Cleophas - and sensing the possibility, however remote, of finding his first love Celeste - he sets out with his brother on this 'reckless venture'.