Debut novel-in-stories, released October 2023. Order from Awst Press here.

Praise for Scenic Overlook:

“Ray has produced a skillful debut that will appeal to readers and viewers of Into the Wild and Nomadland… Of the thirteen stories, “Answering Machine” stands out as a topical treatment of abortion that delves deeply into the intricacies of women’s friendships.” –Washington City Paper

“In these stories, Ray shows how the past can haunt the present. This book snags readers, pulling them into Katie’s fraught journey, inviting them to wince at Katie’s terrible decisions while cheering her good ones, to witness her struggle to overcome grief and come to grips with debilitating loss.” –Necessary Fiction

“There is an attention to the in-between spaces in Scenic Overlook that left me breathless. A lobby, a casual remark, an errand in a new place, a series of years in a service job, the time after sudden death. Anne Ray has figured out how people behave in these extra-normal spaces. There doesn't seem to be any detail that her prose can't notice and, in noticing, honor. This attention charges every page with something like lightning, electrifying every sacred drive. In searing, deft prose, Anne Ray has mapped American daughterhood. How dearly we need it! Scenic Overlook will take its place alongside the keenest observers of the profound mundane. Less a debut and more a vector-shifting arrival.” –Marie-Helene Bertino, author of Parakeet

“In her gripping debut, Scenic Outlook, Anne Ray writes piercingly about grief, work, loneliness, and the relentless past.  I love how passionately her heroine Kate tells her stories and I love how she almost always acts in her own worst interests.  The huge accomplishment of this marvellous book is to show Kate, despite everything, towards the light.” –Margot Livesey, author of The Boy in the Field

“In her novel-in-stories, Scenic Overlook, Anne Ray surveys our cultural topography through the eyes of a young woman who, escaping the realities of grief and family dysfunction, sets out across the country searching to define herself in a landscape of casual ambiguity, populated with drifters and soul-searchers who become the driving force of Ray's perceptive and original voice.  An impressive debut.” –Elizabeth Brundage, author of The Vanishing Point 

“Anne Ray is a true artist of storytelling, and Scenic Overlook is a masterpiece of a novel-in-stories. In this powerful and profound journey through grief and self-discovery, the prose shines like jewels--bright and breathtakingly beautiful, sharp enough to draw blood. Through the lushness of Ray’s attention to detail and the depth of her emotional intelligence, the world of her characters is at once strange and exotic and achingly familiar, creating the kind of experience that simultaneously transports the reader into the narrative and reflects back to them their own desires for love, connection, and belonging. It’s an exquisite book.” –Aryn Kyle, author of The God of Animals

“Anne Ray’s Scenic Overlook is a startlingly good collection. With an expert mix of heartbreak, joy, and humor — and with its gorgeous language and nuanced insights — Ray has created a character and world that readers won’t soon forget.” –Thomas Grattan, author of The Recent East