Gillian Shirreffs in conversation with Elissa Soave in Glasgow to launch Elephant
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- May 7, 2025
One in two of us will face cancer. And yet it so often goes unspoken—sidestepped, avoided, euphemised. In her new book Elephant, Glasgow writer Gillian Shirreffs tackles the subject head-on with clarity, wit and brutal honesty.
To mark the launch, Shirreffs will be in conversation with award-winning author Elissa Soave at Waterstones Sauchiehall Street. The event takes place on Saturday 7 June from 7pm to 9pm and promises to be a powerful and moving discussion about illness, writing and surviving.
Gillian Shirreffs made headlines in 2023 with her bestselling debut Brodie—a darkly funny, sharply observed novel inspired by her love of Muriel Spark, which raised over £16,834 for Beatson Cancer Charity. Now she returns with Elephant, a radically honest and intimate look at 800 days shaped by an aggressive cancer diagnosis, 22 rounds of chemotherapy, 15 radiotherapy sessions, two surgeries and the long aftermath of it all.
Elephant wasn’t written with a book in mind. It’s made from WhatsApp messages, tweets, short stories, diary entries, emails, photographs and other fragments. It reads like life itself—disjointed, funny, surreal, painful and surprisingly warm. Shirreffs’ approach to survival was one step at a time, five minutes at a time. That’s how the book reads too—honest, immediate, never overwrought.
A former HR director and English teacher, Shirreffs holds a Doctor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Her thesis examined the relationship between object and illness—an idea that runs through all her work and is central to Elephant.
Professor Victor Montori of the Mayo Clinic has described Elephant as “a masterpiece.” He writes, “This is about Shirreffs waiting—to be seen, to be told, to be treated, to be scared, to be relieved, to be healed, to be again. Her contemporary notes share the twin burdens of illness and treatment, but also care as communion.”
Elephant doesn’t look away. It doesn’t flinch. It gives you the experience of living through a diagnosis—raw, fragmented, but always real. It’s the book you didn’t know you needed, written by someone who didn’t set out to write it. That’s what gives it its force.
Tickets are available now from Waterstones.
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