Carys Anne BrayFRSL (née Irwin; born December 1975) is a British writer.
Early life and education
Bray was born in Southport to a strict Mormon family. She spent her teen years in Exeter; her father was a local stake president in Devon and Cornwall.[2]
Her second novel, The Museum of You, was published in 2016.[6]
According to The Bookseller, she earned a "strong five figure" advance in 2019 for a novel about climate change, entitled When the Lights Go Out.[6] The book was published in 2020.[7]
Personal
At age 20, Bray married and subsequently had five children before deciding to return to education in her 30s. Her younger brother was the late photographer Matt Irwin (1980–2016).[8]
^"Carys Bray". British Council – Literature. Retrieved 15 October 2024.
^McCleen, Grace (20 June 2014). "A Song for Issy Bradley by Carys Bray review – admirably unsentimental". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 January 2020. The book portrays radical religion through the eyes, not of a convert, but the profoundly disillusioned. Bray is wincingly honest and emotions are portrayed with an assurance that comes from understanding: Claire is hoarding 10 pounds a week from the housekeeping money without knowing why; her desire to weep in gratitude as cars pull over during the ambulance ride to the hospital with Issy, wanting not to tell her unconscious daughter stories as she sits in the intensive care unit but memorise every detail of her; Zippy's conviction that her sister's body is completely devoid of "Issy-ness" upon seeing it in the mortuary – all these ring true and make for arresting reading.
^Steiner, Susie (29 June 2017). "Is there any way to avoid writer's butt?". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 January 2020. Carys Bray, author of A Song for Issy Bradley, writes at a treadmill desk, as does Emma Donoghue, author of Room, and US thriller writer Michael Connolly.