The Tennessee native lived in New York and Chicago in his youth, and worked as a carpenter and house painter most of his life. He wrote beginning at an early age, but his first publication came only in 1998. His first novel, The Long Home, published in 1999 established him as a southern writer of note, and his work has been compared to Faulkner, O'Connor and Larry Brown. Later works included Provinces of Night, and I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down. Much of his writing is dark and gritty in the Southern Gothic tradition. Mr. Gay died in 2012.
