Michele Madigan Somerville is the author of Black Irish (poems, Plain View Press, 2009) and WISEGAL (Ten Pell Books, 2001; Revised, 2018). Glamourous Life (poems) will be published by Rain Mountain Press in 2018. Somerville's poems have appeared in Mudfish, The Nervous Breakdown, Downtown Brooklyn, Hanging Loose and in other journals. Her poem "Portrait of A Woman Beside Her Marker" won 1st Place in 2000. The poem "Lonicera Frangrantissima" was selected for Honorable Mention by poet Charles Simic in Dublin in Ireland's Eason Books' Davoren Hanna Poetry Contest in 2003, and in 2012, Bauhan Books selected Somerville's most recently completed collection, Glamourous Life, for an honorable mention in its May Sarton Contest. Somerville's essays have appeared in Religion Dispatches, Harvard Divinity Bulletin and The New York Times. She has published book reviews in The Poetry Project Newsletter, Variety and Bookmark. She is currently completing an education memoir, a fourth book of verse, a religion memoir and a novel. Somerville holds an MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College where she worked as graduate fellow, and won the school's English Department's MacArthur Award for Poetry and Louis B.Goodman Award for Woman-Centered Writing. At present, Somerville is a candidate for a Masters in Theological Studies at Harvard University's Divinity School. Michele Madigan Somerville taught elementary and high school in New York City for four years before beginning her decade of teaching writing in CUNY schools. She taught creative and scholarly writing for three years at SUNY (Purchase College) and has many years of experience working as an educational activist in extracurricular contexts and community settings. Somerville currently resides in Brooklyn and Cambridge.