 Shay took well-known pictures of Simone de Beauvoir (nude and portrait) when she visited Chicago to be with Algren.Shay wrote a play about Algren's triangle relationship with de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, which had a stage reading in Chicago in 1999.Another collection of Shay's work with Nelson Algren is featured in Shay's 2007 Book "Chicago's Nelson Algren" published by Seven Stories Press.