Carys Davies is a British novelist and short story writer. She has won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Award, the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, the

Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820 by King George IV to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 800 Fellows, elect ...

V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize, the

Society of Authors The Society of Authors (SoA) is a United Kingdom trade union for professional writers, illustrators and literary translators, founded in 1884 to protect the rights and further the interests of authors. Membership of the society is open to "anyon ...

Olive Cook Short Story award, and the Ondaatje Prize. She has been shortlisted for

The Writers' Prize The Writers' Prize, previously known as the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Folio Prize and The Literature Prize, is a literary award that was sponsored by the London-based publisher The Folio Society for its first two years, 2014–2015. Starting ...

and Scotland's National Book Awards and was runner-up for the McKitterick Prize.

Life and education

Davies was born in

Llangollen Llangollen () is a town and community (Wales), community, situated on the River Dee, Wales, River Dee, in Denbighshire, Wales. Its riverside location forms the edge of the Berwyn range, and the Dee Valley section of the Clwydian Range and Dee Val ...

, north Wales, and grew up in Newport, south Wales, and in the

Midlands The Midlands is the central region of England, to the south of Northern England, to the north of southern England, to the east of Wales, and to the west of the North Sea. The Midlands comprises the ceremonial counties of Derbyshire, Herefor ...

, England. Davies studied modern languages at St Anne's College, Oxford, and worked as a freelance journalist in New York and Chicago before moving to

Lancaster, Lancashire Lancaster (, ) is a city in Lancashire, England, and the main cultural hub, economic and commercial centre of City of Lancaster district. The city is on the River Lune, directly inland from Morecambe Bay. Lancaster is the county town, although ...

. She currently lives in

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

, Scotland.

Career

Davies published her debut, a collection of short stories, ''Some New Ambush'', in 2007. It was shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Prize and was a runner up for the Calvino Prize. Her second collection, ''The Redemption of Galen Pike'' (2014), won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. The title story won the

V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize in 2011. Another story from the collection, "The Quiet", won the

Olive Cook Short Story award in 2010. A third story from the collection, "In the Cabin in the Woods", was shortlisted for the Manchester Fiction Prize in 2013. Davies published her first novel, ''West'', in 2018. The story of a settler searching for dinosaur bones west of the Mississippi and of his daughter left at home in Pennsylvania, it was shortlisted for

(then called the Rathbones Folio Prize) and runner-up for the McKitterick Prize. It won the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Award. Davies's second novel, ''The Mission House'', was published in 2020. Set in a south Indian mission house, it tells the story of a middle-aged librarian searching for a fresh start. It was selected for the Wales Literature Exchange bookshelf for 2020-2021 and was the ''Sunday Times'' Novel of the Year for 2020. Davies published her third novel, ''Clear'', in 2024. Set at the time of the

Highland Clearances The Highland Clearances ( , the "eviction of the Gaels") were the evictions of a significant number of tenants in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, mostly in two phases from 1750 to 1860. The first phase resulted from Scottish Agricultural R ...

, it tells the story of a minister sent to a remote Scottish island to evict its last inhabitant. In 2024, it won the Bookmark Festival Book of the Year and was shortlisted for Scotland's National Book Awards Scottish Fiction Book of the Year and the Historical Writers' Association Gold Crown Award. In 2025, the novel was longlisted for the Highland Book Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. It won the 2025 Ondaatje Prize. In her Ondaatje acceptance speech, Davies paid tribute to the Faroese linguist

Jakob Jakobsen Jakob Jakobsen (22 February 1864 — 15 August 1918) was a Faroe Islanders, Faroese linguist and scholar. The first Faroe Islander to earn a doctoral degree, his thesis on the Norn language of Shetland was a major contribution to its historical ...

for his work on the

Norn language Norn is an extinct North Germanic languages, North Germanic language that was spoken in the Northern Isles (Orkney and Shetland) off the north coast of mainland Scotland and in Caithness in the far north of the Scottish mainland. After Orkney and ...

of Shetland. Davies has also won a Northern Writers' Award for fiction and a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. She is a member of the Folio Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Works

Short stories

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Novels

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References

External links

Carys Davies official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Davies, Carys 21st-century British novelists 21st-century British short story writers Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Living people