She is the second daughter of James Galloway and Janet Clark McBride. Her parents separated when she was four and her father died when she was six. Her sister Nora, sixteen years older, died in 2000 from smoking-related illness. Janice Galloway's secondary education was at Ardrossan Academy, which is described in the memoir All Made Up. She studied Music and English at Glasgow University, then worked as a school teacher and waitress for ten years before turning to writing. She was the first Scottish Arts Councilwriter in residence to four prisons and was the Times Literary SupplementResearch Fellow to the British Library in 1999. Her awards include: MIND/Allan Lane Award, the McVitie's Prize, the E.M. Forster Award, the Creative Scotland Award, Saltire Book of the Year and the SMIT non-fiction Book of the Year for This is not about Me and Scottish Best Book of the Year 2012 for All Made Up. Janice Galloway currently lives in South Lanarkshire with her husband Jonathan May and friend Alison Cameron. She has one son, James. She has written and presented three radio series for BBC Scotland and works extensively with musicians and visual artists including Sally Beamish, Anne Bevan, Michael Wolchover, Norman McBeath, Alasdair Nicolson and James McNaught. Her books Clara and This is Not About Me were recorded for the RNIB Talking Books service by the author in 2004 and 2009 respectively. This is Not about Me and All Made Up are available to buy. She collaborated with Anne Bevan to create Rosengarten, an exhibition at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow in 2004. Inspired by research into obstetric instruments and the mechanics of childbirth, it featured nine light tables with sculptural pieces in bronze, plaster and fabric by Bevan with poems and text by Galloway. In December 2008 she was a guest on Private Passions, the biographical music discussion programme on BBC Radio 3, and regularly discusses music, writing and The Scottish Question at public appearances. Galloway wrote the glosses on Bronte's Shirley and Eliot's Felix Holt and Middlemarch in The Book of Prefaces, edited by Alasdair Gray.
