L. H. May was born in Cincinnati, Ohio; was educated in public schools there; received his BA, cum laude, from Yale College, where he majored in English and minored in philosophy; ...view moreL. H. May was born in Cincinnati, Ohio; was educated in public schools there; received his BA, cum laude, from Yale College, where he majored in English and minored in philosophy; and was strongly influenced by the synthesis of those two disciplines suggested by the groundbreaking lecture of Jacques Derrida at Johns Hopkins in 1966, introducing deconstructionism to the United States and expanding the scope of literary criticism beyond its previously narrow scholastic bounds. After graduating from college, May worked as a newspaper reporter before attending law school, receiving his JD from Indiana University. He then lived and worked in Peru, Lima, Arequipa, and Ayacucho, learning Spanish and researching international law, before returning to the United States to practice law in the Midwest while continuing to write fiction.view less