Sarah Marie Graye

Sarah Marie Graye was born in Manchester in 1975, to English Catholic parents. The second eldest of five daughters, to the outside world Graye’s childhood followed a relatively typical Manchester upbringing... until aged nine, when she was diagnosed with depression. It’s a diagnosis that has stayed with Graye over three decades, and something she believes has coloured every life decision, including the one to write a novel. Graye wrote The Second Cup as part of an MA Creative Writing practice as research degree at London South Bank University – where she was the vice-chancellor’s scholarship holder. First published in July 2017, The Second Cup was: longlisted for the Book Viral 2017 Millennium Book Award; a finalist in Read Freely’s Best Indie Book 2017; a finalist in the 12th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards; a semi-finalist in the Online Book Club 2017 Book of the Year Award; and a "distinguished favorite" in the 2017 NYC Big Book Awards. Graye was diagnosed with late-onset ADHD in 2017... and published an extended edition of The Second Cup in 2018 so she could diagnose one of her characters with the same condition. Graye's second novel, The Victoria Lie, was published in August 2018, and explores what it mean to be neurodiverse as an adult, looking at both high-functioning Autism and ADHD. The Victoria Lie has been awarded a Chill with a Book Readers' Award and was longlisted for the Book Viral 2018 Millennium Book Award. Graye lives in Whitstable and is studying a Contemporary Novel: Practice as Research PhD at the University of Kent.