Carys Bray was born into a strict Mormon family in Southport, Merseyside. Her keenly anticipated first novel, A Song For Issy Bradley, tells the story of a Mormon family struggling to come to terms with the death of their youngest daughter, Issy.
Author: richardsmyth
I'm a writer, journalist, editor, cartoonist and general freelance cultural janitor.
The Guardian Country Diary: Nest raids by feral mink take their toll
The moorhen had tried again. My passing-by startled her out of her nest – a cup at the foot of a stand of fading yellow flag irises, not two metres from the lakeshore. Before I made an apologetic retreat, I took note of a single soft-spotted pale egg resting in the hollow. All being well, another five or six would follow.
New Humanist feature: Captive Audience
Sympathetic ear or religious recruiter – what’s a prison chaplain for?
Illustration feature: Gargantua and Pantagruel
It’s hard to imagine anyone less obviously in tune with the spirit of the scandalous Renaissance priest François Rabelais than William Heath Robinson.
PUSH Hockey feature: A Brief History Of Goalies
A goalie’s decisions are based on a welter of variables: what’s the surface like, who’s the attacker, where are my defenders and – not least – is this going to hurt?
Richard Smyth 