MEET A MEMBER - FRAN BRADY

Fran is a native of Dundee and a graduate of St Andrews University (English and French).

She has had a varied career in teaching, tourism and the voluntary sector, working for Le Ministère Intérieure (French Home Office), Save the Children Fund, European Union Anti-Poverty Projects and a number of organisations and projects, Scottish–wide, regional and local.

In 2006, she officially retired … and life became busier than ever. She began writing creatively and published two novels before the end of 2009: ‘A Good Time for Miracles’ and ‘The Ball Game’.

In 2008, she wrote and published (for charity) a book for children called The Honeysuckle Bird Café. ‘Eleanor’s Journey’ was published in 2016, although it had been available as an e-book for two years before this.

Her latest novel, ‘The Ghost of Erraid’ took five years from inception to publication, due to the amount of research it demanded into history, legend and myth.

She occasionally finds herself writing spiritual poetry and even gathered and published some of these into a wee booklet called ‘Let the Blessing Fall’ in 2012. It continues to fall from time to time so another wee booklet may emerge one day.

Membership of two writing groups has led to a laptop full of short stories, memoir pieces, sketches, poems and articles. Now that she has her own website - wwwfranbrady.com - she has made use of many of these, besides also writing a regular blog there.

Her goddaughter (now aged seven) lost her mother suddenly when she was five. Fran tries to be part of the healing and grieving process for the little girl by writing a series of stories specially for her. These can be read on Fran’s website www.franbrady.com/max-bear

Fran has been a committed Christian for almost 30 years and has had a wide variety of church experiences: Livingston Ecumenical Parish (new town); Barclay Viewforth C of S (Edinburgh City Centre); Kirknewton and East Calder (KNEC) Parish Church (West Lothian Villages); Iona Abbey on annual trips to a family house there; Spring Harvest and Clan Gathering (Christian festivals for hundreds). Currently she serves in KNEC on the prayer and children’s talk teams, hosts and leads a house group and writes regular contributions for the church magazine.

She joined SFCW in 2010, joined the committee in 2013 and took on the job of editing WordWise, SFCW’s quarterly magazine for members, in May 2015.

She lives in a 120-year-old house in Mid Calder, an old mining village in West Lothian. She has three daughters, one stepson, seven grandchildren, and a husband whom she manages to see occasionally!

You can keep up to date with Fran on Facebook (she has a personal page and an author page) and on Twitter (@franbbrady).