Carys Davies’s debut novel West was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, longlisted for the European Literature Prize, Runner Up for the Society of Authors' McKitterick Prize, and winner of the Wales Book of the Year for Fiction. Her second novel The Mission House was The Sunday Times 2020 Novel Of The Year.
She is also the author of two collections of short stories, Some New Ambush and The Redemption of Galen Pike, which won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. She is the recipient of the Royal Society of Literature's V.S. Pritchett Prize, the Society of Authors' Olive Cook Short Story Award, a Northern Writers’ Award, a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Folio Academy.
Her short stories have been nominated for many other awards, including the Sunday Times/EFG Short Story Award and the William Trevor/Elizabeth Bowen International Short Story Prize. They have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and widely published in magazines and anthologies, including Granta, The Dublin Review, and The Stinging Fly.
She has been a judge for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award and has twice judged The Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award. Her book reviews, essays, and other non-fiction have appeared in Granta, The Guardian, The London Evening Standard, Marie Claire, the Sunday Telegraph and The Times.
Born in Wales, she grew up there and in the Midlands, lived and worked for twelve years in New York and Chicago, and now lives in Edinburgh.