BIO

Michelle Bonczek (BAHN/zak) Evory is the author of The Ghosts of Lost Animals, winner of the Barry Spacks Poetry Prize (Gunpowder Press, 2019) and the recipient of a 2021 Independent Publisher Book Award; three award-winning chapbooks of poetry; and a poetry textbook, Naming the Unnameable: An Approach to Poetry for New Generations (Open SUNY Press), which is taught in creative writing programs throughout the country.

Her poetry has been featured in the Best New Poets anthology and published in over 150 literary journals and magazines, including Crazyhorse, cream city review, Green Mountains Review, New York Quarterly, North American Review, Rattle, Wasafiri: The Magazine of International Contemporary Writing, Willow Springs, and in the political and environmental magazines Orion Magazine, and The Progressive.

Her honors and awards include being an inaugural Artist in Residence for the National Parks Arts Foundation at Gettysburg National Military Park with her husband poet and musician Robert Evory; an artist residency at SERDE, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Latvia; the Sherwin W. Howard Award through Weber Contemporary West; the Jane Kenyon Award for poetry through Water~Stone Review; The Consequence Prize through Consequences Magazine, and a grant from the Kalamazoo Arts Council.

Bonczek Evory completed a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Western Michigan University, an MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University, and an MA in Literature from the State University of New York at Brockport. She has taught in colleges across the country including teaching creative writing and American literature and culture at Western Michigan University and Lebanon Valley College; environmental writing and literature at The State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry and LeMoyne College; and arts and culture courses at Kalamazoo Valley Community College.

She is currently working on a collection of essays focused on wilderness and female empowerment; a collection of poems focused on infertility and the Earth's sixth extinction; and a young adult novel. She mentors poets on The Poet's Billow, a nonprofit organization she and Rob founded in 2012.