Edward Carey

Edward Carey is a novelist, visual artist and playwright. He has written and produced several plays. His debut novel, Observatory Mansions (with author's illustrations) is sold in 14 countries and was described by John Fowles as 'proving the potential brilliance of the novel form'.

His second novel, Alva and Irva The Twins Who Saved A City, was longlisted for the IMPAC Literary Award in 2005.

He has written several adaptations for the stage, including Patrick Süskind’s The Pigeon, and Robert Coover’s Pinocchio in Venice. His own plays include Sulking Thomas and Captain of the Birds.

Edward Carey is a writer and illustrator who was born in North Walsham, Norfolk, England, during an April snowstorm. Like his father and his grandfather, both officers in the Royal Navy, he attended Pangbourne Nautical College, where the closest he came to following his family calling was playing Captain Andy in the school’s production of Showboat. Afterwards he joined the National Youth Theatre and studied drama at Hull University.

He has written plays for the National Theatre of Romania and the Vilnius Small State Theatre, Lithuania. In England his plays and adaptations have been performed at the Young Vic Studio, the Battersea Arts Centre, and the Royal Opera House Studio. He has collaborated on a shadow puppet production of Macbeth in Malaysia, and with the Faulty Optic Theatre of Puppets.

He is also the author of the novels Observatory Mansions and Alva and Irva: the Twins Who Saved a City, which have been translated into thirteen different languages, and both of which he illustrated. He always draws the characters he writes about, but often the illustrations contradict the writing and vice versa and getting both to agree with each other takes him far too long. He has taught creative writing and fairy tales on numerous occasions at the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, and at the Michener Center and the English Department at the University of Texas at Austin.

He has lived in England, France, Romania, Lithuania, Germany, Ireland, Denmark, and the United States. He currently lives in Austin, Texas, which is not near the sea.