Biography
Michael Fischer (he/him) is a nonfiction writer and storyteller. Through his writing he seeks to drive intersectional conversations that lead to systems-level change, primarily by interrogating the ways in which ecological justice can play a role in dismantling the carceral state.
Fischer is a Senior Manager at Jobs for the Future’s Center for Justice & Economic Advancement, where he helps build robust education and employment pathways for currently and formerly incarcerated people. He also conducts writing and storytelling workshops for various organizations, including AIDS Foundation Chicago. He is a fellow of Right of Return USA, Illinois Humanities Envisioning Justice, Luminarts Cultural Foundation, the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts, and The Education Trust Justice Fellows Policy Program.
His writing—which has been cited as notable in Best American Essays and won the National Systems-Impacted Writers’ Contest, among other honors—appears in the New York Times, Salon, the Sun, Lit Hub, Guernica, Orion, the Rumpus, Brevity, River Teeth, and elsewhere. A Moth StorySLAM winner, Michael tells stories on Moth Mainstages across the United States and abroad, and has been featured on Modern Love: The Podcast, Ear Hustle, the Outside Magazine Podcast, and The Moth Radio Hour, among other programs. 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.
