Joan Michelson

Senior Lecturer in English, Head of Creative Writing at the University of Wolverhampton, England, 1976 -2002, Joan Michelson has since taught literature and run poetry workshops in continuing education and directed creative art projects in schools. Her collection, Toward the Heliopause, poems in conversation with her deceased husband's poems, is published by Poetic Matrix Press, CA, USA, 2011. The book has been translated into Romanian for the Translation Centre at the University in Bucharest. Poems, essays and prose fiction have featured in the British Council's annual anthologies of new writing from the UK. Her poem, "Muslim Girl" won the Poetry Society of England's Members' Prize, 2011-2. Her poem "Amen", judged by the UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, won first prize in the Londonarts.co competition 2008. Her poems and other writing have been published in over sixty magazines in the UK and USA. She has been the recipient of numerous writing fellowships including residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Arts, Foundacion Valparaiso, Spain and in 2012, as poet-in-residence at The Art Studios at Key West, Florida. Originally from Boston, she lives in England and teaches at Birkbeck College, London. In 2011 she was appointed Crouch End London Thornton's Budgens' Poet Laureate. In this capacity she is promoting poetry within the community