David Brayley is an Award-Winning author from Swansea. He specialises in sport, having written autobiographies with elite Welsh sports stars, Tony Cottey (Swansea City & Glamorgan) and Ashley Williams (Swansea City, Everton & Wales). He is also a children’s author where he combines his lifelong love of sport to create engaging and inspirational sports based stories. He has written seven books, all by mainstream publishers.
His first children’s novel, ‘Champion of Champions’, was praised by multi-award winning author, Peter James as being an ‘inspirational and pacy read, beautifully written and utterly enriching.’ In 2020, David collaborated with Wales rugby legend, James Hook, on a new MG series of books called, ‘Chasing a Rugby Dream’. The first in the series, ‘Kick-Off’, was awarded the Children’s Sports Book of the Year Award at the 2021 Telegraph Sports Book Awards. The second book in the series, ‘Impact’, was released in 2021. David was the ghost writer of Tony Cottey’s weekly cricket column for South Wales Evening Post for seven years, has contributed to many magazines and has been a regular contributor to match day programmes for Swansea City FC and Sussex CCC.
Over the past ten years, David has continued to be a prolific visitor to schools across Wales and beyond, and has a passion of promoting literacy via sport. Using his own unlikely journey to becoming an award winning author, he uses the inspirational and transformational qualities of sport, sports writing and life stories of sports people to help guide reluctant readers and writers to embrace all things literacy via a variety of workshops. He works with Year 3 to Year 11. He has worked as a consultant for the National Literacy Trust on their ‘Premier League Reading Stars’ literacy scheme, and delivered literacy projects for Glamorgan CCC, Ospreys Rugby and Swansea City FC. The Headteacher of Clwyd Primary School in Swansea remarked, ‘The children and staff were so interested and inspired by your lessons. I love your passion for combining skills learnt in sport to reading and life in general.’ David is available for school visits throughout Wales and the wider UK. His visits are chargeable and more information on his workshops can be found on his website.
David also is a regular host for the Ospreys in the Community Sporting Memories programme, which uses sport to help engage with those suffering from dementia and their carers. He is available for speaking engagements of any kind.
