Joan Brady

Joan Brady (born 1939) is a writer. She is the first woman, and so far the only American, to win the prestigious Whitbread Book of the Year Award. Other winners include Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. Brady was born in San Francisco, California to Mildred Edie Brady and Robert A. Brady. She has a sister Judy Brady. Prior to becoming an author, she was a dancer with the San Francisco Ballet and the New York City Ballet then went on to study philosophy at Columbia University in New York. She married the late author, Dexter Masters, in 1963 and her son is author Alexander Masters, author of the acclaimed Stuart, A Life Backwards. She currently lives in Oxford, England. Her second novel, Theory of War, won the prize in 1993 and was hailed...