Jessica Andrews is a novelist. Her work explores intersections of social class and gender in relation to the body. Her debut novel, Saltwater won the Portico Prize in 2020 and her second novel, Milk Teeth was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award in 2023. Her work is translated into seven languages. Her stage adaptation of BIFA winning and BAFTA nominated film Saint Maud by Rose Glass ran at Live Theatre in 2024.
She is a Contributing Editor at ELLE magazine and she also writes for the Guardian, the Independent, BBC Radio 4 and the Architectural Review, among many others. Her writing has been featured on BBC Front Row, BBC Woman's Hour and BBC Radio 3 and she has given guest lectures at the University of Sheffield, the University of Liverpool, the University of Kent, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg and Texas State University.
She was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction Futures for writers under the age of 35 and longlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award in 2022. She co-runs literary and arts magazine, The Grapevine and co-presents literary podcast, Tender Buttons. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at City University, London and she has also taught at ARVON, Litro, New Writing North and the University of Roehampton, among others. She is currently completing a PhD on representations of working-class women's bodies within contemporary fiction through innovative literary forms.