Michael Salinger

Michael Salinger is an American poet, performer, educator, and literacy consultant based in Northeast Ohio. He has been writing and performing poetry and fiction for more than 30 years, with work appearing in numerous literary journals in the United States and Canada. A longtime leader in performance poetry, he has captained and coached the Cleveland Poetry Slam team at the National Poetry Slam, served as a board member and educational consultant to Poetry Slam, Inc., and founded the teen writing and performance program at Cleveland’s Playhouse Square Foundation. After more than two decades working as an engineer, he became a full-time educator and consultant, visiting hundreds of cities in over 50 countries to work with students and teachers on writing, performance, and literacy instruction.

Salinger is the co-author, with Sara Holbrook and Stephanie Harvey, of From Striving to Thriving Writers: Strategies That Jump-Start Writing, a professional resource for teachers published by Scholastic. With Holbrook, he has also co-authored multiple professional books for educators, including Practical Poetry: A Non-Standard Approach to Meeting Content Standards, Outspoken!: How to Improve Writing and Speaking Through Poetry Performance, High Definition: Memorable Vocabulary Instruction, and High Impact Writing Clinics. His book Well Defined: Vocabulary in Rhyme received a VOYA Top Shelf Award.[