B. 1968

Born in Tokyo, Japan, Michelle Naka Pierce is the author of Continuous Frieze Bordering Red (2012), She, a Blueprint (2011), Beloved Integer (2007), and TRI/VIA (2003), among others. She earned a BA and an MA from the University of New Mexico and an MFA from Naropa University. Continuous Frieze Bordering Red explores identity, migration, and boundaries. About it, Pierce has said, “My book becomes a kind of meditation of … my unstable borders, and the color of skin, and this whole notion of migration, being born in Japan, living in the states, then living in London. … When you occupy that space of not being quite American and not being quite Japanese, the ground is constantly shifting underneath you.”

Pierce has received numerous awards, including a Poets Out Loud Editor’s Prize, a Ted Berrigan Poetry Award, an Aimee Grunberger Memorial Award, and a Blue Mesa Review poetry award. Pierce edits Something on Paper, an online poetics and multimedia journal. She teaches at and serves as dean of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. Pierce lives with the poet Chris Pusateri outside of Boulder, Colorado.