Rebbecca Ray

Rebbecca Ray was born in 1979, to dope smoking, goat-rearing, hippy artist parents, in the most rural area of Mid Wales. Home life and school life held great disparities and produced a precocious, ambitious teenager. But a love of words and ideas didn't prove enough to counter a problem with authority or the tendency towards a rocky personal life and Ray left school at 17, to produce her first novel, the controversial best-seller A Certain Age.

Published by Penguin when she was 18, the book opened many doors and Ray was to spend most of the next ten years in London, traversing a full spectrum of jobs and lifestyles; from fiction writing and journalism to waitressing, penthouse chic in Canary Wharf to ketamine experiments in basement squats in Hackney, all the while working on her second novel, a thousand page long love letter to Wales, Newfoundland.

Shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Commonwealth Prize in '05, Newfoundland was received with passionate reviews. The culmination of seven years' work, it left Ray eager to concentrate on new horizons. She married a South African artist and 'rave' organiser in 2004, and together they have spent the last three years developing a festival in Mid Wales which unites music - live and electronic - with art, literature and performance. The Newfoundland Secret Summer Gathering is a biannual not-for-profit event, generating donations for arts and community organisations in Wales and across the UK.

In the last 3 years, living with her husband on the farm where she grew up, Ray has completed a third novel, The Answer, inspired by her experiences of squatting and homelessness in London, contributed to short fiction anthologies The Flash and Perverted by Language, and taught creative writing through organisations such as the Arvon Foundation.

She continues to pursue a diverse range of projects: starting work on a fourth book, taking part in preparations for the Newfoundland 09 Secret Summer Gathering, travelling, occasionally working in pubs, often sitting on street corners and generally attempting to find an even keel.