Rate My Professor Seth Michelson

Michelson has authored original poetry collections including Hope on the Border: Immigration, Incarceration, and the Power of Poetry (Morehouse Publishing, 2025), Swimming through Fire (Press 53, 2017), and Eyes Like Broken Windows (Press 53, 2012), the latter winning the 2013 International Book Awards in Poetry. He has translated works such as The Sun of Always by Liliana Ancalao (Eulalia Books, 2022), Women of the Big Sky by Liliana Ancalao (Word Works, 2020), and The Ghetto by Tamara Kamenszain (Veliz Books, 2018). Notable scholarly publications include “Becoming a Witness: Jimmy Santiago Baca” in The Cambridge Companion to American Prison Literature and Mass Incarceration (Cambridge University Press, 2024), “When Silenced Language Sings: Poetry, State Violence, and the Mapuche Memory-Making of Liliana Ancalao” in A Contracorriente (2024), and “Poetic Difference: How Emplaced Writing Influences Lives in Prison” in Teaching Literature and Writing in Prisons (MLA, 2023). He received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for poetry translation in 2017 and has been a Fulbright Scholar. Michelson conducts poetry workshops with incarcerated undocumented youth, compiling anthologies like Dreaming America: Voices of Undocumented Youth in Maximum-Security Detention (Settlement House, 2017), contributing to discussions on immigration, incarceration, and poetic resistance.