Michelle Lerner is a recovering public interest lawyer and cat herder. She's currently raising a magpie-like child while emerging from the depths of late-stage chronic Lyme Disease, writing songs on a shiny new guitar, and unsuccessfully trying to establish a disciplined schedule to work on her poetry and fiction. She received an MFA in poetry from The New School and her poetry manuscripts have been selected as finalist for The Poetry Box(R) Chapbook Prize and semifinalist for the 2018 Pamet River Prize and the 2020 Willow Run Poetry Book Award. Her individual poems have appeared in many journals and other fora, including VQR's Instagram Series, Harvard Women's Law Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Lips, Adanna, Knock, and Sixfold, as well as several anthologies. The manuscript for her debut novel, Ring, has been selected as a finalist for Book Pipeline's Unpublished Contest and the Bridge Eight Fiction Prize, longlisted for the Dzanc Prize for Fiction, and chosen as a Notable Selection for the Chapter One Prize, while it awaits a publisher. Michelle recently became a writing mentor for We Are Not Numbers, a nonprofit that publishes the autobiographical stories of Palestinians living under occupation and in refugee camps.
