Michael Fischer

Michael Fischer is Senior Program Manager of the University of Chicago’s Program in Creative Writing. He also conducts writing and storytelling workshops for various organizations, including AIDS Foundation Chicago and the Odyssey Project. Michael is a fellow of the Luminarts Cultural Foundation, Right of Return USA, and Illinois Humanities Envisioning Justice. His nonfiction—which has won the National Systems-Impacted Writers’ Contest, been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and been cited as notable in Best American Essays, among other honors—appears in The New York Times, Salon, The Sun, Lit Hub, Guernica, Orion, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

A Moth StorySLAM winner, Michael tells stories on Moth Mainstages across the US and abroad, and has been featured on programs like Modern Love: The Podcast, Ear Hustle, the Outside Magazine Podcast, and The Moth Radio Hour. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Reno and an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago, where he was awarded a Grauman Fellowship.