Richard May
Author of Because of Roses: Ten Stories
Richard May’s short fiction has been published in his story collections Gay All Year-a Story for Every Month, Inhuman Beings: Monsters, Myths, and Science Fiction, and Ginger Snaps: Photos & Stories (with photographer David Sweet) and in numerous
literary journals and anthologies, including the Lambda Literary nominated Outer Voices Inner Lives. His stories are inspired by visuals. A photo, a dream, the image of a person passing in the street begin to tell him a story, which he writes down at
home on his computer as fast as he can.
Rick has worked in commercial and academic publishing in New York and California in various management positions in editing, sales, subsidiary rights, and business. For ten years, he ran his own book sales representation firm in four Western states, employing eight associates. He and his team sold books to librarians from kindergarten to college.
He organizes two monthly reading series based in San Francisco. Perfectly Queer
Readings features Queer authors of books with some Queer content. It is in its
seventh year. Odd Mondays considers all authors and is in its twenty-second year.
Rick is in his fifth year as series organizer. He is also the founder of Word Week, a
neighborhood literary festival, and the online book club Reading Queer Authors Lost
to AIDS, which aims to revive interest in books written and published by authors
during the AIDS pandemic.
Rick is a member of the 18th Street Writers weekly writing group and the Bay Area
Queer Writers Association. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Raymond College
at the University of the Pacific and studied post-graduate English at the University of
Southern California, with an emphasis on the Transcendentalists of the mid-
Nineteenth Century. His favorite author is Jane Austen. His favorite novel is War and
Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
He was born in California, lived in Oklahoma and New York, and now makes San
Francisco his home, where he maintains a backyard garden of nearly eighty roses.
His partner is the author and musician Wayne Goodman.
Links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/richardmaywritr
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/richard.may1313