About

Michele Tracy Berger is a professor, a creative writer, and a pug-lover.

At the age of six, Michele’s mother turned a walk-in closet into creative space just for her daughter. That closet became a portal and gateway to self-expression. Michele pretended that Will Robinson, a character on the television show Lost in Space was her brother and that she fought alongside Lindsay Wagner who played The Bionic Woman. And, she went on many other adventures. From that age on, Michele never doubted the power of the imagination.

Her main love is writing science fiction though she also is known to write poetry and creative nonfiction, too.

Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in SLAY: Stories of the Vampire Noire, Concrete Dreams: Witches, Warriors and Wise Women, Afromyth: A Fantasy Collection Volume 2, Stories We Tell After Midnight #2, UnCommon Origins: A Collection of Gods, Monsters, Nature and Science, Flying South: A Literary Journal; 100 Word Story, Thing Magazine, Apex Magazine, Blood and Bourbon, FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, and The Red Clay Review.

Her nonfiction writing and poetry have appeared in The Chapel Hill News, Glint Literary Journal, Oracle: Fine Arts Review, Trivia: Voices of Feminism, The Feminist Wire, Ms. Magazine, Carolina Woman Magazine, Western North Carolina Woman, A Letter to My Mom (Crown Press), Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler (Twelfth Planet Press) and various zines.

She runs an award-winning blog called ‘The Practice of Creativity’ and is currently a columnist for The Chatham County Line.She has had winning entries in the Carolina Woman Magazine Writing Contest, the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Poetry Contest, and the Winston-Salem Writers’ Contest. Michele was a ‘My View’ monthly columnist for The Chapel Hill News from 2012-2014.

In 2020, her science fiction novella, “Reenu-You” about a mysterious virus transmitted through a hair care product billed as a natural hair relaxer, was published by Falstaff Books. Much of her work explores psychological horror, especially through issues of race and gender.

She is the 2019 winner of the Carl Brandon Kindred Award from the Carl Brandon Society for her story “Doll Seed” published in FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction.

She’s currently three drafts into a horror novel that takes place in the North Carolina areas of the Great Dismal Swamp. Prior to the Civil War, the Great Dismal Swamp housed many fugitive slaves and maroon communities. The novel will be published in fall 2023 by Falstaff Books.

Michele has been a judge for a variety of fellowships and book prizes awarded through Carolina Wren Press, Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities, and the North Carolina Writers’ Network (NCWN).

She is immediate past president of the North Carolina Writers’ Network and  President of the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association.

Michele is completely undone by the sight of pugs and has to restrain herself from collecting any item they appear on. She lives between Cleveland, Ohio and Pittsboro, North Carolina with her husband Tim.