Michael Klein (writer)

Michael Klein (born August 17, 1954) is an American Lambda literary award-winning fiction writer, poet, and faculty member of the English department at Goddard College and The Frost Place Conference on Poetry.

Life
Klein was born in Washington, DC and attended Bennington College as an undergraduate, later receiving his MFA from Vermont College. He resides in New York City, where he has lived since the age of two. Klein attended PS 41 in the West Village, and New Lincoln School on the Upper West Side for Junior High School, and finished at New York City's Music and Art High School where he studied voice.

Among his mentors was Adrienne Rich, attending poetry workshops with a select few other teenagers. Not only an important influence on his love of poetry and writing, she became a life long friend with whom he would share time whenever she came to New York for a reading engagement or to visit her home city.

Klein was a fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center from 1990 to 1991, where he finished his first memoir, Track Conditions, about his life on the race track where he was a groom to the Kentucky Derby Winning horse Swale and his subsequent life of sobriety.

Poetry
Klein has published three books of poetry, two books of non-fiction as well as literary criticism and interviews with other notable authors. He is currently publishing, albeit not exclusively, under Sibling Rivalry Press.

Educator
Klein serves as a member of the writing faculty at Goddard College. He teaches courses to humanities students in the memoir, essay, fiction and poetry concentrations. He has also featured interviews with writers like the poet Adrienne Rich and the playwright Eve Ensler.