Exile on Kalamazoo Street (19 page)

Michael Loyd Gray
was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and 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.

Michael's most recent novel (August 2013),
The Canary
, which reveals Amelia Earhart's final days, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

He is the winner of the 2005 Alligator Juniper Fiction Prize and the 2005 The Writers Place Award for Fiction. Gray's novel
Well Deserved
won the 2008 Sol Books Prose Series Prize. His novel
Not Famous Anymore
was awarded a grant by the Elizabeth George Foundation and was released by Three Towers Press (2012). His novel
December's Children
was a finalist for the 2006 Sol Books Prose Series Prize and was also released in 2012 by Tempest books (an imprint of Sol Books) as the young adult novel
King Biscuit
.

Gray has written a sequel to
Well Deserved
called
The Last Stop
and another four novels entitled:
Fast Eddie
,
Blue Sparta
,
The Salt Meadows
, and
The Armageddon Two-Step
.

Michael Loyd Gray is a lifelong Chicago Bears and Rolling Stones fan. You can find him online at www.michaelloydgray.com.