Jessica Charlotte Andrews (born 1992) is an English author, academic, and editor. Her debut novel Saltwater (2019) won the Portico Prize. This was followed by Milk Teeth (2022). Her writing covers topics such as class, gender, mother–daughter relationships, and body image.[1]
In 2017 when Andrews was 25, Sceptre (a Hodder & Stoughton imprint) won a four-way auction to publish her debut novel Saltwater in spring 2019.[7] The novel is heavily based on Andrews' own experiences as a working class northern woman who moved to London for university and then into her late grandfather's home in Donegal, Ireland. She wrote the novel while living there.[8] Andrews chose to write it as fiction rather than a memoir because she wanted "to distance myself from the story" and felt "there's a lot more freedom in fiction... With fiction, you can take an image or symbol further".[9]Saltwater won the 2020 Portico Prize, given to novels that best evoke "the spirit of the North".[10] Andrews was also shortlisted for the 2022 Good Housekeeping Women's Prize for Fiction Futures Award.[11]
Andrews was an associate lecturer at the University of Roehampton in 2021 before joining City, University of London as a lecturer in creative writing in 2022. That same year, she became a contributing editor of the magazine Elle.[4] Andrews hosts the literary podcast Tender Buttons with Jack Young for Storysmith, a bookshop in Bristol.[12]
For her second novel Milk Teeth, released in 2022, Andrews reunited with her first publisher Sceptre.[13][14] The novel, centred around a whirlwind romance and body image, is more fictional that Saltwater, but still rooted in emotional truths.[15][16]Milk Teeth was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's 2023 Encore Award.[17]
