Jon Ransom

Jon Ransom is a British novelist born in 1978. He studied at Exeter University and has worked in publishing. His debut novel The Whale Tattoo (2022, Bloomsbury) won the Polari First Book Prize in 2023, bringing him to wider attention. The Whale Tattoo follows Shane, a young gay man processing the recent death of his lover while carrying a bottled whale heart around the British Isles in a road trip of grief and strange connection. His second novel The Gallopers (2023, Bloomsbury) is set on a travelling funfair in 1950s rural England and follows two brothers — one gay, one traumatised by war — as they navigate desire, grief, and the criminalisation of homosexuality. It won the Polari Prize for Book of the Year in 2024. Ransom's fiction is celebrated for its lyrical intensity, its dark humour, and its exploration of queer life across different historical periods. He is considered one of the most significant new voices in queer British fiction.