Novelist and short-story writer.
For twenty years I taught secondary English in a school where most of my pupils had never met a writer, and were fairly sure they'd never want to. I wrote in the mornings before the bell, on the backs of marking, in the margins of other people's stories. My first novel came out the year I turned fifty.
My work tends to circle the same quiet territory: families that love each other badly, small towns that remember everything, and the long shadow a single decision can throw across a life. I'm interested in ordinary people at the exact moment the ordinary stops working.
I write slowly and rewrite obsessively. I believe a sentence should earn its place, and that the most frightening things are usually said in kitchens.
Selected Work
Harlan & Doe, hardback and paperback
Three sisters return to their mother's house on the Fife coast to empty it, and find that the walls have been keeping score all along. A novel about inheritance — of houses, of tempers, of silence.
"Calloway writes grief the way it actually arrives: sideways, and years late."The Scotsman
A collection of twelve stories
Twelve stories set across a single Scottish winter, each one turning on the small betrayals that hold a community together. Longlisted for the Saltire Fiction Prize.
"Quietly devastating, and very funny about it."The Herald
Debut novel
An accident on a level crossing binds two strangers for the rest of their lives, whether they like it or not. My first book, and still the one readers write to me about.
"A story is just a secret told slowly enough that you can bear to hear it."
For festival invitations, school visits and rights enquiries, my agent is Moira Beck at the Fairlight Agency. For everything else, you can reach me directly.
iris@iriscalloway.co.uk