More About May
A veteran media executive with over twenty-five years in the entertainment industry, the skills May has acquired throughout her career have all come into play in her role as audiobook producer and director. With over a decade of experience, her books are consistently cited for excellence.
It started for her when she arrived in New York City from the midwest to pursue the life of an actor. She and some friends from acting school formed a production company which ignited her interest in producing and the writer's creative process.
May got her start in the film business working on staff as the Theatre Consultant for the newly re-launched CBS Theatrical Films, covering new plays in NYC and attending Theater Festivals, and as a freelance story analyst for MGM-UA. Later, she was named Vice President of Development for Robert DeNiro's Tribeca Productions, working on The Night We Never Met, A Bronx Tale, and Wag the Dog. As an independent producer she developed projects with Chris Columbus’s 1492 Pictures and with Robert Lawrence at Disney. Subsequently, she took on the same role for the late award-winning producer/writer/director Alan J. Pakula, working on his last film, The Devil’s Own and working with the President of Production on scripts by Donna Tart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and H.G. Bissinger.
In book publishing, May became an acquisitions and line editor and helped launch the Crime Line imprint of Bantam Books. As an editor at HarperMedia, she focused on expanding the number of e-books offered through the HarperCollins Digital Warehouse, original digital media creation and shepherding audio titles through the production process.
Over her career, May also managed the scouting department of the literary agency Writers House, helmed her own literary scouting agency, Gotham Scouting Partners, which served foreign publishers and film companies, and later joined Rob Weisbach Creative Management as a literary agent, where she represented multi-award-winning children's book author Jacqueline Woodson.
For five years, May taught a beginning screenwriting class at NYU at, what was then called, the School of Continuing Education. The cource she conceived also helped students to understand the business of writing for the screen by inviting guest lecturers from different facets of the industry. As a consultant to the Great Books Summer Program, she brought talent from the East Coast and Hollywood to talk to middle and high school students immersed in literature and creative writing. Among them were: Dennis Lehane, Chris Columbus, Alan Zweibel, John Rocco, Sharon Robinson, Jodi Picoult, Andre Dubus III, and Peter Hedges.
May has worked in the studio with a wide range of talent: from Pulitzer Prize-winners like Gail Caldwell, Natasha Trethewey, Mary Oliver, Hisham Matar, and Paul Harding, reading their own works, to award-winning actors including Debra Winger, Jane Curtin, Carol Kane, Joe Morton, Blair Brown, Jane Alexander, Allan Corduner and Hope Davis.
May has coached and worked with first-time narrators, authors and actors, as well as audiobook pros. And she has directed and/or produced titles by such diverse authors as Alan Alda, Gretchen Carlson, Brene Brown, Khizr Khan, Kathy Reichs, Adriana Trigiani, Anita Shreve, Jane Green, James Patterson, Rick Riordan, Azar Nafisi, Bryan Stevenson, Gretchen Rubin, Gail Collins, Garth Nix, Lesley Stahl, Ruth Reichl, Richard Peck, Kate DiCamillo, Jay McInerney, and H.H. Dalai Lama.
