During his delinquent youth in Salford, Thornton-based writer and artist Michael Stewart taught himself a kind of self-sufficiency by living rough off the land for short periods.

This experience seems to have made him thick-skinned to bad weather. Five-mile hikes, with the family dog Wolfie bounding along, sometimes over the hills to Haworth, are a pleasure.

However cold or wet it gets out there, he maintains a kind of inner equilibrium. Only unwarranted assaults on his peace of mind by outsiders – he’s had a few of those to deal with in the past 12 months – will bring out the urban street-fighter in him.

This month he celebrates his 40th birthday with the publication of his first novel, King Crow. On February 14, his second play for BBC Radio 4 since 2007, Castaway, will be broadcast.

The genesis of King Crow, published by Hebden Bridge-based Blue Moose Books, was an idea for a screenplay Michael originally conceived for regional film agency Screen Yorkshire.

Loosely based on his own rogue childhood in Salford and his knowledge of ornithology, the central character is Paul Cooper, an outsider who looks at people and wonders what sort of birds they are. Each chapter is named after a species of bird which reflects the dark progress of the story.

Michael rejects the idea of art as either therapy or autobiography. Although King Crow is written in the first person, Michael sees Cooper as an amalgam of people he knew in his own troubled youth. There are similarities and differences.

He says: “Cooper is fatherless. I had a nuclear family. He was excluded from school, as I was, but he doesn’t see the point of fiction, he likes facts. I am the opposite. I could live in a cave and eat nettle soup all day, but at night I would have to build a fire and sing songs or tell stories to the animals.

“He’s quiet and insular, but I am quite gregarious. We are both autodidacts. I learn best when left to my own devices.”

How did Michael, who is married to Lisa with a young son, Carter, change his life when he might so easily have become psychologically disturbed like Paul Cooper?

“I was excluded for a year in 1982. There were two of us. The other lad spent a year at home being taught by his mum. I thought he got the best deal. But he got into a lot of trouble, breaking into houses, stealing cars and ended up in prison.

“I was given a pile of books to get through and enjoyed it. Before that, I was off school for ten weeks with an illness. A teacher used to drop off books on a Monday morning and pick them up on a Friday. I would do a week’s work in an afternoon and have the rest of the week off.

“At the end of my year, I went from being in the bottom groups to the top. But I didn’t like being in a classroom. My art teacher realised that.

“On Wednesdays, he’d put me in a room on my own with books – the Bible and others – and I would make pictures from them which were hung all round the school.

“I can’t follow written instructions. I have to fiddle with something until it works. It drives the wife mad. But that is my learning style,” he adds.

He spent five years working in a steel factory in Manchester and four as a care worker in High Royds Hospital, Menston. He is a past winner of the BBC’s Alfred Bradley Bursary and currently lectures in creative writing at Huddersfield University.

Is he consciously pursuing a theme in his writing? For example, his first radio play, Excluded, is about a bunch of disaffected teenagers and a dysfunctional teacher. Castaway concerns the self-delusions of a white middle-class man who thinks himself liberal, but ends up hacking into his neighbour’s computer to find evidence against him.

Michael says: “It’s about middle-class urban paranoia that looks down on working-class culture as racist. I write about people entrapped by something they are trying to break out of. I think Castaway is a step forward. Although it is about an isolated individual, it has a political connotation because it’s also about ideology.”

For the past three years he has been artistic director of the Huddersfield Literature Festival. He says the next one, running from March 16 to 20, may be his last. But given his preference for art that shines a light outwards rather than inwards, how did he go about selecting the festival line-up?

He said: “Eighty per cent of those booked I have seen. Anne Fine was recommended, but I have heard her on radio and seen her on television.

“David Nobbs I have seen perform a number of times. He’s a very funny writer, a wonderful raconteur and a fantastically entertaining speaker. David Peace is very unpretentious and approachable for people interested in contemporary writing.

“Simon Armitage gets better as he gets older. I found Alan Bennett to be a great guy to meet who gives really good answers. A L Kennedy is one of those rare finds – a writer and stand-up comedian good at communicating with an audience.”

Michael started out stealing books from a Manchester bookshop. Now he’s writing them.

Children’s author Melvin Burgess says of Michael’s novel: “Part- action, part-thriller, part-psychological drama, part-birding manual. I’ve come across nothing quite like it.”

King Crow, published by Blue Moose Books, is available from January 28.