Michael Yates

Yorkshire-based Michael Yates is a novelist, poet, playwright and author of short stories, described by the Bradford Telegraph’s Emma Clayton as “a gifted writer with a wry take on life.”

Michael’s latest book of short stories (2024) is GIRL WITH A MEAT AXE, published by Armley Press. Novelist Michael Stewart, author of King Crow and Café Assassin, says: “Witty, inventive and ingenious, full of life and ideas.”

Michael’s latest novel (2022) is DYING IS THE LAST THING YOU EVER WANT TO DO, a thriller about the Sheffield Home Front in the Second World War, also published by Armley Press. Poet and broadcaster Ian McMillan says of it: “Michael writes with an ear for the everyday magic of speech, and an eye for the telling image that will hold an idea or nudge a story along.”

In 2018, Armley Press also published 20 STORIES HIGH, a book of Michael’s short stories. Novelist Jim Crace, winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize, said: “These stories are stylish, spirited, wise, playful and entirely compelling.”

A previous short story collection BRANWELL & OTHER STORIES was published by Nettle Books, who also published his novels THE GANGERS and HOMER’S ODC.

Michael has won prizes for his stories from the Jersey Arts Centre, the Armagh Writers Festival, the Wolds Words Festival and the Writers & Artists Yearbook.

In 2021, Michael was Poet in Residence in Mid-Yorkshire Hospitals, writing about the struggle against Covid. He has also been Poet in Residence in Whitby and at Wakefield Cathedral, and published LIFE CLASS, a volume of verse. And he was Writer in Residence in Bradford when it became UNESCO's City of Film.

Michael has had a dozen plays performed in cities in the north of England, including Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Wakefield, Sheffield and Bradford. TILL MY EYES BLEED was performed at Ilkley Literature Festival; SUNDAY AFTERNOON AGAIN was chosen for the Write Now Liverpool Drama Festival; LIFE SENTENCE was a prize winner at the Sheffield One-Act Play Festival; and THE BRONTE BOY won a prize at Wakefield Drama Festival in 2011 and a new production was commissioned by the Bronte Society for its international AGM weekend at Haworth in 2013.