Libba Bray

Martha Elizabeth "Libba" Bray (March 11, 1964) is an American writer of young adult novels including the Gemma Doyle Trilogy, Going Bovine, Beauty Queens, The Diviners series, and Under the Same Stars.

Life Martha Elizabeth Bray was born in Montgomery, Alabama. Presbyterian minister, and her mother was an English teacher.

She and her family moved to West Virginia for a brief period, then to Corpus Christi, Texas, and finally to Denton, Texas,

Bray graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1988 as a theater major.

Bray was married to Barry Goldblatt, a children's book agent, with whom she shares a son, Josh.

Career Bray's first job was in the publicity department of Penguin Putnam, followed by three years at Spier, an agency specializing in book advertising. She wrote two more books to finish the Gemma Doyle Trilogy: Rebel Angels and The Sweet Far Thing.

Going Bovine was published by Delacorte in 2009 and won the Michael L. Printz Award from the American Library Association recognizing literary excellence in young adult literature.

Beauty Queens, about a group of beauty pageant contestants whose plane crashes on an island, was published by Scholastic Press in May 2011.

Bray's novel, The Diviners, was published on September 18, 2012. It centers around Evie O'Neill, a seventeen-year-old with a special power who has been sent to live with her uncle in New York City in 1926. The sequel, Lair of Dreams, was released in August 2015 and the third book, Before The Devil Breaks You, was released in October 2017. The fourth and final book in the series, The King of Crows, was released in February 2020.

Awards and honors

Awards

Honors A Great and Terrible Beauty and The Sweet Far Thing received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly. Going Bovine received starred reviews from Booklist and Publishers Weekly. Before the Devil Breaks You and the audiobook renditions of Beauty Queens and The King of Crows received starred reviews from Booklist. The Diviners received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly. Lair of Dreams received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly.

A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing were national bestsellers for children's fiction.

Publications Gemma Doyle Trilogy

The Diviners series

Standalone novels Going Bovine, Delacorte (2009) Beauty Queens, Scholastic Press (2011) Under the Same Stars, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2025)

Anthologized short stories "Primate the Prom", in 21 Proms, eds. David Levithan and Daniel Ehrenhaft, Scholastic Paperbacks (2007) "Bad Things", in The Restless Dead, ed. Deborah Noyes, Candlewick Press (2007) "Not Just for Breakfast Anymore", in Up All Night, HarperTeen, (2008) "Nowhere Is Safe", in Vacations from Hell, HarperTeen (2009) "The Thirteenth Step", in The Eternal Kiss: 13 Vampire Tales of Blood and Desire, ed. Trisha Telep, Running Press (2009) "The Last Ride of the Glory Girls", in Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories, Candlewick Press (2015)