Michelle Herman is the author of the novel Missing, which was awarded the Harold U. Ribalow Prize for "best Jewish fiction" and selected as one of the 25 Best Books of the Year by VLS, the literary supplement of The Village Voice; the collection of novellas A New and Glorious Life; the novella Dog; and The Middle of Everything: Memoirs of Motherhood, her first nonfiction book.  Her awards and honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a James Michener Fellowship, numerous individual artist’s fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and two major teaching awards, the University Distinguished Teaching Award and the Rodica Botoman Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching and Mentoring, from the Ohio State University, where she has taught since 1988, and where she directs the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences Freshman Common Book Program  and the Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Fine Arts.  Born and raised in Brooklyn and educated at Brooklyn College and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, she lives now with her husband, the painter  Glen Holland, and their daughter, Grace (and too many pets) in an overcrowded and insanely cluttered turn-of-the-century house in Columbus, Ohio.  When she is not writing or teaching or administering or ministering to family and house, she sings.  For the last two years she has been studying with the extraordinary Stephanie Henkle.

   mh laughing her head off at her fiftieth birthday party, March 2005

ice cream and guitar photo by Kathy Fagan; laughing photo by Linda Kerr