Michael Loyd Gray, local Champaign novelist. Used with permission from Michael Gray.
If anyone has ever told you that quitting never got anyone anywhere, that person was telling the truth. Michael Gray, an alumnus of the University, has had the opportunity to work as a journalist, teacher and writer. If anything, Gray is an example that having one job in life is never enough, but sticking to something that you are passionate about will end in the creation of something to be proud of. Gray’s creation? A book titled The Canary that examines the life of Amelia Earhart — a pioneer the world never fully got to know. In the meantime, get to know a bit about Gray.
»buzz: You started off as a journalism major at UIUC, but how exactly did you transition from writing articles to writing books?
»Michael Gray: Well, it was probably the restrictions of journalism that had a big part to play in wanting to be creative and more artistic. I was a reporter for 10 years. I think the desire to do something much more creative than a newspaper had some role to play in it, and the other would be growing up having read good novels. I always had an interest in it, so at some point I quit journalism and I went to graduate school and started focusing on fiction.
»buzz: What kind of creative writing did you first find an interest in?
»MG: Well, when I went to grad school, I was interested in writing short stories, so I was writing short stories and some of those were published. For a while I thought that was probably what I was going to do, but after I finished, I started teaching. At some point I realized that I really wasn’t interested in short stories anymore and that I wanted to write novels. You can’t reveal an entire world or galaxy in a short story like you can do in a novel.
»buzz: One of the first things I noticed when looking at the cover of The Canary was the cover and the art design. Can you give us a little background on the chosen cover?
»MG: It was originally a photo and an artist colored it. I’m not sure what the actual process was, but the artist enhanced it with colors. So, it does look very nice.
»buzz: There are so many different topics that you could have chosen to write about, but what made you decide to focus on Amelia Earhart?
»MG: Well, I’ve always been interested in Amelia Earhart. I think she was an extraordinary person that was very brave and very adventurous. She was doing something that was really hard to do at the time, which was flying. The whole notion of someone trying to fly around the world in 1937 was a lot harder to do when compared to today. I admire her love to learn to fly, and I love her love of flying and how it became a consuming passion for her. She is one of the most iconic figures of the American 20th century, as was Ernest Hemingway, who is also in the book. I noticed that they lived a few miles apart in Illinois and decided to put them together in the book, though they never met.
»buzz: By the time you were done writing this book, did you feel as if you had established a connection with Earhart?
»MG: There is a chapter in the book titled “Ascension” and every time I read it, it almost brings tears to my eyes because it’s no mystery — she has to die. How she died has not been established, but I give it away in the book. It’s how I got a start for my book, actually. All we know is that, whether she crashed in the ocean or died on an island, she died. That makes me sad because I felt like I knew who she was as a person and that was extraordinary. It’s not just that she was flying in 1937; it was that she was a woman flying in 1937. It’s not only that she was doing something remarkable for that time period; it was that she was doing it in a time period where women were kind of slotted into specific roles. I hope the reader can see this nice relationship that Earhart and Hemingway could have possibly had. I think what’s nice about it is that we get a glimpse into their life before they were famous. The reader can get a glimpse at that.
»buzz: How will this book connect with people of all ages?
»MG: For an older crowd, they can learn more about someone they’ve learned about. For younger readers, they can relate to 15 and 16-year-old Earhart and Hemingway in the book and someone in their age group. The book can be universal for anyone that has heard of Earhart or Hemingway.