May McEvoy

May is a writer from Dorset. Her work embraces the ambiguities and ambivalences of human experience – the unanswered questions and indefinable longings that haunt a life.

Her play, Placeholder, was performed at the University of Oxford – where she studied English Language and Literature – and subsequently at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe. During her MA, she has become interested in how the shapes of speech and thought might echo musical and dramatic structures. Her radio play, A Dying Fall, is built around the structure of a specific Chopin prelude and her signature script, Sanctuary, explores the language of dreams.

Set against the backdrop of a rural church, Sanctuary follows the forty days of sanctuary allotted to a young woman in late-medieval Dorset. It speaks to contemporary debates surrounding bodily agency, desire, and the nature of freedom. Beyond the MA, May hopes to continue to tell women’s stories first and foremost as human stories.