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Growing up, Ann Michael aspired not to be a writer, but rather an artist or a scientist. "It's possible," she admits, "that I began to think about becoming a writer when I was in the seventh grade; I know I wrote and illustrated books for my little brother, who was just learning how to read at the time."
Another thing Michael knew was that she liked to read. Her early favorites were nursery rhymes and poetry by A.A. Milne and Robert Louis Stevenson; as she matured, Michael grew increasingly interested in classic poets, like Blake and Donne, and classic authors, like Dickens, Tolkien, C.S.Lewis, and William Faulkner.
Though she was born in Indiana, Ann Michael has many fond memories of Ohio. "Ohio is a place I have often journeyed through, since I grew up on the East Coast in a family with Midwestern roots. It seems I do write about Ohio when I am writing travel or memoir poems… I think of the state as a kind of travel landscape, the gate to the rural Midwest of my childhood."
Michael received her master's of fine arts (MFA) degree from Goddard College and has earned a living as an essayist, newspaper columnist, published writer and poet, radio commentator, and educator. She shares her passion for writing by not only teaching college courses at DeSales University, but also by visiting Pennsylvania public schools, where she teaches young children poetry through the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts/Arts in Education Program.
Ann Michael has won a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and has been published in numerous anthologies, literary reviews, and professional journals, including Poem, Natural Bridge, and Coe Review. She lives in Pennsylvania and has two teenaged children.
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