STEPHEN CREAGH UYS

Stephen Creagh Uys was born in South Africa. At the age of two, he moved with his family to London, where he learned to read and write, and as a backup, to belly dance. People were very impressed that such a strange young man could belly dance.

At the age of four, Uys (pronounced Ace) moved back to South Africa, where he spent the next seven years. To escape the growing political turmoil, the family immigrated to the United States in 1977, settling in Westchester, New York. After starting a lifetime vocation with juvenile delinquency, Stephen was accepted on scholarship to Avon Old Farms, one of the country's premier boarding schools. There could be a happy ending right here, but for the knowledge that he was expelled after his freshman year.

He moved to Portugal, where he was marginally involved with his roving family. He surfed with the Portuguese, feasted on presunto , and learned how to drink. After a year in Portugal, Stephen moved back to the United States with his family, settling in Scituate, Massachusetts, on the Irish Riviera, just south of Boston. In Scituate, he graduated high school, totalled two cars, broke his neck, discovered women and the court system, not necessarily in that order.

From Scituate, he moved to New York's Lower East Side and entered the American Academy of Drama. He told his friends he was going to be an actor, while knowing deep down that he was going to be a writer. His brief career culminated with the role of bad boy in the Oscar-nominated Indie film, Metropolitan.

In New York City, he lived in places that varied from the Chelsea Hotel to Tompkins Square Park. He waited tables at the Gotham Bar and Grill and other storied eateries, and became a fixture at the original Village Idiot. His debut novel draws on these experiences. After making a complete balls-up of his life in New York, he moved to Harvard Square, Cambridge, trying with modest degrees of success to kick all sorts of habits.

At Harvard University—He never enrolled but did make liberal use of the computers in the Science Center. — Stephen began the first draft of The Last Generation of Chainsmokers. After leaving Cambridge, he lived in relative comfort in Martha's Vineyard, he was homeless in Philadelphia. Oh, yes, he also spent six months looking at models on South Beach, Miami, but that's another story.

He now lives quite reasonably in Long Beach, California, where he is working on his second novel, Possibility and Slaughter. Deep down, he still pines for the life of a professional belly dancer.