Michael Loyd
Michael Loyd Gray was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, but grew up in Champaign, Illinois. He earned an MFA in English from Western Michigan University and has taught at colleges and universities in upstate New York, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Texas. He graduated from the University of Illinois with a Journalism degree and was a newspaper staff writer in Arizona and Illinois for ten years, conducting the last interview with novelist Erskine Caldwell.
Well Deserved
The folks of Argus, Illinois, from the small-time dealer to the returning Vietnam vet, the townie grocery clerk and the new sheriff, all know what they want out of life, but the paths to their desires are conflicted and unclear. In a narrative with all the clarity and determination of a prophecy, Well Deserved chronicles the struggles of these four people as they come to the stark realization that their paths are not solitary, but entwined, and their very lives hinge on one shared moment.
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King Biscuit
In King Biscuit, Michael Loyd Gray returns once again to the fictional small town of Argus, Illinois, (the setting of his novels Well Deserved and The Last Stop), to tell a coming-of-age story set in 1966. With the Vietnam War hovering in the background. Seventeen-year-old Billy Ray Fleener, frustrated by the narrow confines of Argus, seeks adventure and a look at the wider world in a novel that puts him on a collision course with the famous as well as infamous.
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Praise for Michael Loyd GRay
“Gray’s clear straightforward prose is aimed directly at the revelation of character and unspools with the unmistakable cadence of a storyteller.”
Stuart Dybek
author of I Sailed with Magellan
“Gray is an expert weaver of fates, a wistful manager of lives, a wordsmith playing with texture, tone, and that all-important element, the balance of tension. For as he wrenches our hearts, he also pushes us to turn the next page, and the next, and the next. “
Monique Raphel High
author of Between Two Worlds
“Gray’s captivating tale of 1970s Lake Argus is ultimately endearing and memorable, and convinces me that this is a writer with some serious chops.”
Darren DeFrain
author of The Salt Palace and Inside & Out: Stories
“With a style that is sensitive, rugged, and thoroughly American, Gray captures the turmoil of a nation through the eyes of one of its native sons.”
Dana Micheli
writer and editor with Writers In the Sky Creative Writing Services
“Gray bores deeply into each of his characters, shoving aside all extraneous elements until we are left only with their humanity.“
Monique Raphel High
author of Between Two Worlds