The Writers of Wales Database

MAY, STEPHEN

Stephen May is a former barman, warehouseman, museum attendant, television writer and teacher. Having become a dad while still at college, he spent several years struggling to support his family. This period largely informs his writing, and permeates through his first novel, TAG (Cinnamon, 2009). Written in two voices, the book is centred in Wales and considers prejudices around minority languages and culture. TAG was on the 2009 Wales Book of the Year Long List.

Stephen is currently Director of the Ted Hughes Arvon Centre at Lumb Bank in West Yorkshire and lives with his wife and two youngest children. He is the author of two well received stage plays Back The World (2003) and Still Waiting For Everything (2005), both of which have toured nationally. Stephen has also written for television and has secured a two book deal with Bloomsbury. His second novel Life! Death! Prizes! will be published in 2011.

Reviews:
With respect to TAG (Cinnamon, 2009)

"…a compelling and very readable first novel. May writes with a fresh, new voice that skips lightly between the two main characters even when the storyline gets very dark…"
Sue Brickay, Bedfordshire on Sunday

"…Very funny and politically resonant…"
Katie Popperwell, Manchester Evening News

"...Though TAG is not a teenage novel any more than Catcher In The Rye is, the vivacity and iconoclasm of Mistyann will surely particularly appeal to young adult readers in the way that Holden Caulfield did, while Jonathan Diamond’s weary stoicism in the face of a world he is beginning not to understand should resonate with all ages. Both characters are the kind that get under your skin, and by the end of the book you find yourself rooting for them both...”
Ray French, author of Going Under

Selected Publications:
TAG (Cinnamon, 2008)
Life, Death, Prizes (Bloomsbury, 2011)


 

TAG (Cinnamon, 2008)

Mistyann is fifteen, unpredictable, unreliable and violent. She’s also gifted. And now she’s on her way to Wales for a special residential course for talented youth. An American psychologist wants to unlock her potential, help her become the person that she’s always dreamt of being. God help Wales. God help us all.

Jonathan Diamond is forty-one. Looks a bit like Tom Cruise and he’s going to Wales too. A failed musician and a recovering alcoholic he’s now an Advanced Skills Teacher and he’ll be in loco parentis for the week. Together the two of them develop an unlikely and dangerous alliance as they are forced to confront difficult truths about themselves.

Part bleakly comic confession, part twisted romance, at heart an elegy for dreams that refuse to die, TAG is the fast-moving, at times shocking, story of two lives turned upside down by reckless moments and impulses that won’t be denied. Full of wit, drama and an eye for the absurdities of the way we live now, TAG is a memorable debut novel.

To purchase this title from gwales.com, please click on its front cover