A writer, environmental activist, politician and farmer, Michelle Regalado Deatrick lives in Michigan, where she is a technical editor and, with her family, cares for an 80-acre farm and restored native prairie. She is deeply engaged in social, environmental and climate justice issues ranging from fighting against dangerous pipelines and for workers’ rights in her community, to advocating for bold climate legislation nationally.

Michelle’s writing centers on nature, environmental justice, and politics. Her work has appeared in Southern Poetry Review, American Literary Review, Mid-American Review, Copper Nickel, Best New American Voices, and more. She won the Chautauqua Poetry Contest and second runner-up in the Boulevard Emerging Poets’ Contest. One Hundred Thousand Poets for Change selected one of her environmental poems for a Global Action protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline; it was mailed to President Obama by tens of thousands of poets internationally. A finalist for both the Rita Dove Poetry Award and the James Wright Poetry Contest, Michelle has received fellowships from MacDowell and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and multiple residencies from the Ragdale Foundation.

Michelle holds degrees from Wesleyan and Harvard, an MFA from the University of Michigan, and did further graduate work in policy and statistics at Stanford. She served in the Peace Corps in Kenya, and has worked as a shoe salesperson, a cafeteria worker, a receptionist, a cashier, a community college and high school instructor, a policy analyst, and an elected county commissioner. She has taught poetry workshops privately and at the University of Michigan’s adult education program.