When I called on playwright Michael Stewart at the Thornton home he shares with his wife Lisa and young son Carter, he was marking scripts for the Open University and preparing for the opening session of the creative writing course he teaches at Huddersfield University.

He had been busy with a few others things too. He had completed a series of 28 paintings for a children's book, The Day Death Died, written by London-based actor Stephen Mullins and published by Lulu at £15.70; finished the artwork for the cover of a new album by the Bradford band The SneakyPeeks; and drafted a film script called King Crow for Screen Yorkshire.

There's more. A play he co-wrote for schools called Space Circus is currently doing the rounds of 115 venues in Yorkshire (it comes to Bradford at the end of the month); another play, Karry Owky (previewed and reviewed in Play) transfers to Manchester Library Theatre next week.

He has nearly finished another play called S&M (Steve and Maria) - a take on The Servant - and he's been writing material for actor and stand-up performer Nick Stanley - The Urban Slut.

And PDG Books, Huddersfield, has just published an anthology of short stories and poems edited by David Gill and Mr Stewart.

Michael, in fact, has two stories in the volume - He Was Going Out, and You Are Going Back. The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialising, Fadism and Commonism (the title has little or nothing to do with the contents of the book) costs £8.95.

It comprises 15 short stories and 18 poems from 20 contributors, 14 of whom have a connection with Huddersfield University.

So why all the work on so many different fronts?

"When you've lived from hand to mouth for so long it's very hard to say no to things. You work on the idea that 80 per cent of it won't happen; but it just so happens that this year it has, so I'm stuck with all this stuff," he said.

There is another reason too. Coming up to his 37th birthday, Michael is trying to earn as much as possible to build up a university fund for his son.

One of Carter's teachers told Michael that eight-year-old boys weren't interested in stories, just facts. He set out to prove her wrong by illustrating the book The Day Death Died, a splendid fable written in 28 four-line verses.

Michael said: "I wanted it to be a book for lads and dads to sit and enjoy together. Young kids are obsessed by death; they cotton on that it exists and want to know why it does.

"The book says death is part of life and shows that without it you can't have life. People start living forever, nobody dies, and because the population gets bigger the law bans people from having children. In the end people pray for death to come back so that life can resume."

The sharp, angular paintings perfectly complement the verse story which has the pleasing emphasis of refrain in the fourth line of each verse - "The day that death died."

It's a bright and lively piece of work, not the least bit morbid.

The other work for children, the play Space Circus, was funded by Setpoint, an agency created to encourage science through education but not through the school curriculum.

"It consists of three 12-minute plays with a mystery at the end. Each play dramatises an aspect of science that's become important - living on another planet or star, gravity and its effect on the human body, waste disposal, a definition of life," Michael said.

The film script he's been asked to write by Screen Yorkshire is about the adventures of two boys and the fascination with ravens that one of them has after visiting the Tower of London. The raven, of course, is a symbol of freedom, liberty.

From conversations that we have had over the past year or so it is clear that for Michael liberation does not mean freedom in a social sense; it also means the conscious act an individual has to make to free himself or herself from personal fears.

The work he is doing with the actor Nick Stanley is a case in point.

"The Arts Council gave us some money to do a cabaret show called Dark and Dirty in which Nick played the part of the compere, who was a broken-down comedian.

"We had some money left over so I funded Nick to go on a ten-week course on stand-up comedy at The Comedy Store in London. We then started collaborating on writing material for an act.

"It was also a way of re-establishing Nick's self-esteem. I have seen him change from someone deeply depressed, whose hatred for people was pathological (a disease), to someone who is more optimistic. His gigs in London have been getting noticed."