Jennie Erdal worked in literary publishing for many years as an editor and translator. At Quartet Books she managed the Russian list, and in the mid-eighties she started Quartet Encounters, an imprint that focused on literature in translation. For much of this time she was also the ghostwriter of a London publisher, who figured prominently in her subsequent memoir, Ghosting: A Double Life [Canongate, 2005]. Ghosting became an international bestseller, featured as a Radio 4 Book of the Week, and was shortlisted for a number of awards, including the J R Ackerley Prize for literary autobiography, and the Saltire Society Literary Awards.
Last year she published The Missing Shade of Blue [Little, Brown, 2012], a novel set in Edinburgh and tackling themes of loss, love and the illusory nature of happiness. Subtitled ‘A Philosophical Adventure’, the novel is infused with the spirit of the Scottish philosopher David Hume, and is currently longlisted for the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize.
Jennie Erdal has appeared in Granta magazine and is a regular contributor of features and reviews for the arts pages of the Financial Times and other publications. She lives in St Andrews and currently teaches creative writing at the University of Dundee.