Stanley Bennett Clay is the author of eight novels, including: Diva (The Malibu Press) and In Search Of Pretty Young Men (Atria Books), which also won the N.Y. Hotep Society Book Award for Best Gay Novel. He also co-wrote Visible Lives: Three Stories in Tribute to E. Lynn Harris with James Earl Hardy and Terrance Dean (Kensington Books).  In addition, he authored Dominican Heat, Hollywood Flames and Madame Frankie, all three released by fan favorite, Ellora's Cave Publishers.

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. At the time, SBC was the most widely distributed periodical for the Black LGBTQI+ community.

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 for the year it was submitted at the Pan African Film Festival. He wrote and directed the feature documentary, You Are Not Alone, an examination of depression among black gay men. He 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, and was performed Off-Broadway and toured nationally for three years.

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 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." He was awarded The Lifetime Achievement Award at the 5th Annual Black Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival in Oakland CA, and The Lifetime Achievement Award by Indianapolis Black Gay Pride. He's also received the Pride Index Esteem Award for Artistic Expression twice, and awarded the inaugural Sheryl Lee Ralph's Diva Foundation and Better Brothers Los Angeles Lifetime Achievement Award.