Jane Fraser is an award-winning fiction writer, based in the Gower peninsula, south Wales. Her debut novel Advent, published by Honno (2021), won the 2022 Society of Authors’ Paul Torday Memorial Prize. Her first collection of short fiction, The South Westerlies, was published by Salt (2019) and her second collection from Salt, Connective Tissue, was published in October 2022.
Connective Tissue _ Pub/Salt/22
This collection of short fiction aims to define the sometimes indefinable and give voice to those struggling to make sense of what life throws at them.
There are those who travel in a continuous loop on London’s underground and those who dance at night with the departed. A woman confronts herself in a bedroom mirror after decades of denial and a widow finds comfort in an osteopath’s consulting room. And then there is a strange creature who falls to earth; dreams and portents; crows and folklore and much more.
The stories are tragic and comi-tragic, but all reveal the strength and complexity of the human spirit. They bring poignant insights on grief, loss and longing and the depths and strangeness of the human psyche and how we manage to survive and just about cope.
The Irish Times says: Separate but intricately linked stories, artfully told. Sinew, bone and blood unite vividly in gripping tales of male violence, women’s pain, regret and the ties that bind.
Ruth McKee, The Irish Times
Jane Fraser’s Connective Tissue, a second collection that is subtle, nuanced, elegant, wise, and resonant. Don’t expect baroque plots or hot-button issues. These are stories of mothers and daughters and husbands and wives, and the ordinary matter of their lives.The language is clean and considered, doing its job unobtrusively, like a perfectly trained butler.
Jo Lloyd, winner of the BBC Short Story Prize 2019, in Nation Cymru
Immersive short stories full of small intimacies that become increasingly addictive. Jane Fraser is a superlative writer, quiet, subtle and Chekovian. She delves into life’s turmoils and tendernesses with skill and honesty and brings back, if not wisdom, then at least acceptance and at best understanding. All the pleasure of drifting in the sea on a fine day.
Tôpher Mills, Poet, 5 star review on Amazon
Bitter-sweet tales of ordinary lives caught at extraordinary moments.
Chris Hamilton-Emery, Poet and Publisher
I loved Connective Tissue, a book so good it feels like your Greatest Hits Album. It feels darker, stranger and riskier than The South Westerlies, but there's the same keen observation, feel for landscape, and empathetic understanding of the complexities of relationships. This is grown up writing in the best sense…
Dr Alan Bilton, Author and Academic, Swansea University
Reviews
You can read full reviews of Connective Tissue here:
Nation Cymru
The Irish Times
Amazon
You can order a copy of Connective Tissue from:
Salt | Griffin Books | Amazon | Waterstones
Advent _ Pub/Honno/21 |
Winner of the 2022 SoA Paul Torday Memorial Prize
Winter, 1904, and feisty twenty-one-year-old Ellen has been summoned back from her new life in Hoboken, New Jersey, to the family farm on windswept Gower, in a last bid to prevent the impending death of her alcoholic father.
On her return, she finds the family in disarray. Ailing William is gambling away large swathes of Thomas land; frustrated Eleanor is mourning the husband she once knew; and Ellen’s younger twin brothers face difficult choices. Ellen, tasked with putting her family’s lives in order, finds herself battling one impossible decision after another.
Resourceful, passionate, and forthright, can she remain in Gower, where being female still brings with it so many limitations? Can she endure being so close to her lost love? Will she choose home and duty, or excitement and opportunity across the Atlantic?
The historical research is deep but worn lightly in this novel: the period feels immediate, breathing with vocabulary of place and time, village life intimately drawn. It’s an atmospheric story sustained throughout with a simmering, elegant tension.
Ruth McKee, The Irish Times
In giving birth to Ellen, Jane Fraser has created a new kick-ass Welsh heroine, born on the green lands of Gower but whose sights are raised to the horizon far away.
Euros Lyn, BAFTA-winning TV and film director
Vivid and poetic, Jane Fraser’s Advent is a well-deserved winner. It is an outstanding tale, made all the more unforgettable and powerful by its remarkable hush and restraint.
Donald S Murray, Society of Authors’ Paul Torday Memorial Prize judge
Reviews
You can read reviews of Advent here:
Nation Cymru
Northern Reader/Joules Barham
Good Reads
Books and Wine Gums/Emma Moyle
the_unhurried_reader
pippinsbooks
You can order a copy of Advent from:
Cover to Cover | Honno | Griffin Books | Amazon | Waterstones
The South Westerlies _ Pub/Salt/19
The South Westerlies, a collection of short stories, takes its name from the winds that sweep across the Gower peninsula, south Wales, the UK’s first-ever designated area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB).
The eighteen stories are linked by Gower’s physical location and the tone of the rain-drenched wind. They are about the dynamics between people and place, and dig deep to reflect the lives of Gower’s fictional inhabitants behind its pasteurised façade.
The glimpses of lives lived present an out of season perspective. Themes of grief and loss loom large – listless, claustrophobic, embittered and mournful – the characters peopling the pages of The South Westerlies are imbued with a greyness of spirit that matches the mood of the wind as they struggle to ‘make do’ as best they can.
The South Westerlies is deliciously engaging, each elegantly crafted tale emanating a spare, poetic beauty.
Jenny White, arts & culture writer, Western Mail
Fraser’s book is not simply a collection of stories but a painting of a place, rendered bit by bit with elegant brushstrokes. Fraser’s Gower is not the Gower of butterscotch beaches and second homes, but a land of myth and folklore and shattered lives and sudden deaths.
Harry Readhead, writer, Cardiff Review
The collection is an original and valuable contribution to the literature of Gower and Wales.
Tristan Hughes, novelist and short story writer
They are simple tales beautifully told, layered and nuanced, small moments that somehow make a vast landscape of human experience.
Paul Burke, writer, NB Magazine
You can order a copy of The South Westerlies from:
Salt | Cover to Cover | Griffin Books | Amazon | Waterstones
What’s happening
News
Bath Short Story Award (BSSA) 2024
Jane is delighted to have won 2nd prize in the BSSA 2024 with her story, ‘The Glitter Path’. Read more on her blog.
BBC Radio 4
Jane is thrilled to have been commissioned for a second short story for @BBCRadio4 #shortworks Diolch to @EmmaHarding01 for producing, and to the fab @hfdaniel for agreeing to read. It’s great to have this medium for sharing new work.
The Rhys Davies Short Story Competition 2023
Jane Fraser is delighted to have judged the 2023 Rhys Davies Short Story Competition. Harvest, the anthology of contemporary fiction by the winners, is available from Parthian | Waterstones | Cover to Cover.
Historical Novel Society
Jane Fraser and her novel Advent are the subjects of Kathleen B Jones’ feature, ‘Of a Certain Age: A Conversation with Female Novelists who Debut at a Later Age’ in Historical Novel Society’s August 2023 edition.
Connective Tissue – Review in The Irish Times
Thank you to Ruth McKee for a wonderful review of Connective Tissue in The Irish Times
Advent, winner of SoA Paul Torday Memorial Prize 2022
Jane is honoured to win this award for her debut novel.
For more about the Award Ceremony and next year’s prize click here
BBC Radio 4
Soft Boiled Eggs, a short story by Jane Fraser, was first broadcast on Friday, 4 March @ 15.45 on BBC Radio 4 as part of the Short Works series – read by Sharon Haf Morgan.
Good Housekeeping Magazine
Advent by Jane Fraser gets a splash in the Worth sharing/Worth reading section of the June 2021 edition of Good Housekeeping Magazine.
The Irish Times
Jane Fraser receives a wonderful review of her debut novel Advent from Ruth McKee in The Irish Times.
www.irishtimes.com
Events
The historical research is deep but worn lightly in this novel (Advent): the period feels immediate, breathing with vocabulary of place and time, village life intimately drawn. It’s an atmospheric story sustained throughout with a simmering, elegant tension.