Michelle Peñaloza is the author of All The Words I Can Remember Are Poems, winner of the 2024 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award and the James Laughlin Award, which is awarded by The Academy of American Poets to recognize and support a second book of poetry forthcoming in the next calendar year. (Persea Books, 2025). She is also the author of Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, winner of the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize (Inlandia Books, 2019), and two chapbooks, landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias, 2015), and Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes (Organic Weapon Arts, 2015). Michelle has received support from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Upstate California Creative Corps, Loghaven, Willapa Bay AIR, Caldera, 4Culture, Artist Trust, PAWA (Philippine American Writers and Artists), VONA/Voices, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, among others. You can find her work at The Seventh Wave, Poetry, Honey Literary,BellinghamReview, New England Review, Lantern Review, and featured in American Life in Poetry. The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, Michelle was born in the suburbs of Detroit, MI and raised in Nashville, TN. She now lives in rural Northern California.
