Michelle Naka Pierce, Associate Professor, Naropa Writing Center
BA, University of New Mexico
MA, University of New Mexico, with distinction
MFA, Naropa University

Born in Tokyo, Japan, Michelle Naka Pierce is the author of four books and chapbooks, including Beloved Integer (2007) and the collaborative text TRI/VIA (2003). Her work has been anthologized in For the Time Being: The Bootstrap Book of Poetic Journals and Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry. She has taught at Bard College, University of New Mexico, and Naropa University, where she is the director of Naropa Writing Center. Her teaching interests include writing pedagogy, avant-garde poetry, and gender/women's studies. Excerpts from her manuscript She, A Blueprint for InterSurface, with art by Sue Hammond West, have been published in American Letters & Commentary, Trickhouse, Mandorla, Upstairs at Duroc (France), and elsewhere. Michelle spent her sabbatical living in London and writing her new manuscript, tentatively titled Continuous Frieze Bordering Red, which explores Rothko’s floating borders in his Seagram Murals in relation to unstable cultural borders.