Stanley Bennett Clay

Stanley Bennett Clay received 3 NAACP Theatre Awards and 3 Drama-logue Awards for writing, co-producing and directing the stage play "Ritual." The film version, starring Clarence Williams III and Denise Nicholas, marked Clay's film writing/directorial debut and was voted The Jury Award at the 2000 Pan African Film Festival. In 2012 he wrote and directed the feature documentary "You Are Not Alone," an examination of depression among black gay men.

Clay produced on stage the GLAAD, L.A. Weekly, L.A. Times and NAACP Award-winning musical "Children of the Night" and the world premiere of James Graham Bronson's "Willie & Esther." That production received 2 L.A. Weekly Awards as Best Play and Best Ensemble Performance.

Clay wrote, directed, and composed "Street Nativity" (commissioned by the National Council of Negro Women for the Black Family Reunion Festival), wrote/directed the play "Lovers," (Theatre of Arts) directed west coast premieres of "Jonin'" at The Harmon Theatre (Drama-logue Award/Direction) and "The First Breeze of Summer" (Theatre of Arts). He also wrote, directed and starred in the stage play "Armstrong's Kid" which had runs in Los Angeles, Oakland CA and Off-Broadway New York. He directed the world premiere of James Earl Hardy's stage adaptation of his best-selling novel "B-Boy Blues." "B-Boy Blues" won the Audience Award at New York's Downtown Urban Theatre Festival, was performed Off-Broadway and toured nationally for three years.

Clay is the author of six novels, "Diva" (Fleming & Sons), "In Search Of Pretty Young Men"(Simon & Schuster/Atria Books), "Looker" (Simon & Schuster/Atria Books), "Aching For It" (Ellora's Cave Publishers), Hollywood Flames" (Ellora's Cave Publishers) and "Madame Frankie (Ellora's Cave Publishers). "Search" won the 2004 N.Y. Hotep Society Book Award for Best Gay Novel. His seventh book "Visible Lives: Three Stories in Tribute to E. Lynn Harris" co-written with James Earl Hardy and Terrance Dean was released by Kensington Books in 2010. His eighth book "Dominican Heat" was released in January of 2015.

Former Editor-In-Chief of Black Beat magazine and American Correspondent for London's Blues and Soul magazine, Clay published and edited SBC magazine for 10 years (1991-2001). At the time SBC was the most widely distributed periodical for the Black LGBT community.

He starred, guest-starred, and/or has been featured in over 100 TV episodes, films and commercials, including "Good Times," "Cannonball," "Minstrel Man," "Man Friday" and "Cheers." He has also done voice-overs for over 500 films, TV shows, audio books, videos and commercials.

He received the NAACP Best Actor Image Award for his stage performance in the Inner City Cultural Center's production of "Anna Lucasta" and was nominated for the same award (and won another Drama-logue Award) for his lead performance in the Lafayette Players West's production of "Zooman and the Sign." Other stage performances include "Or" by Felton Perry (One Flight Up), "Sonata" by Bill Duke (Theatre of Arts), Albert Camus' "Caligula" (Zodiac Theatre) and "Six Pieces of Musical Broadway" (Dorothy Chandler Pavilion).

Clay is the first recipient of the African American Gay and Lesbian Cultural Alliance Outstanding Achievement Award (1990) and received Genre magazine's 1993 Role Model to the Gay Community's Lifeguard Award. He is the recipient of the International Black Writers of America's highest honor: The Edna Crutchfield Founder's Literary Achievement Award "In recognition of outstanding work as writer, publisher, producer and director of the written word." On August 18, 2007, he was awarded The Lifetime Achievement Award at the 5th Annual Black Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival in Oakland CA. and in 2010 was awarded The Lifetime Achievement Award by Indianapolis Black Gay Pride. He also received the 2012 and 2014 Pride Index Esteem Award for Artistic Expression, and in 2015 was awarded the inaugural Sheryl Lee Ralph's Diva Foundation and Better Brothers Los Angeles Lifetime Achievement Award.

Born in Chicago IL, the second oldest of eight children, he lived in Los Angeles CA from 1963 to 2010 before moving to Manhattan New York where he currently resides with his husband, Reny.