Michelle Poirier Brown is an internationally published writer, performer, and feminist activist. She is nêhiýaw-iskwêw and a citizen of the Métis Nation. Her debut book of poetry, You Might be Sorry You Read This, was published in the Robert Kroetsch Series from the University of Alberta Press in Spring 2022. Also in 2022, her chapbook of poems and photographs, Intimacies, was published by Jack Pine Press. 

She is the recipient of PRISM International’s Earle Birney Prize (2019) for her poem “Wake”. In 2021, she was nominated for a National Magazine Award in Personal Journalism, and in 2022, CBC Books named her as one of their Writers to Watch. The song cycle, “The Length of Day” (Jeffrey Ryan, composer), was commissioned by the Pacific Opera Victoria in 2021. Her work has also appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Arc, CV2, The Malahat Review, The Sun, and Release Any Words Stuck Inside of You.

Michelle was the first woman in Canada to win a court case establishing reasonable accommodation in the workplace for breastfeeding women. Now retired from a career as a professional writer and, later, conflict analyst and Federal Treaty Negotiator, she is giving voice to stories she has been sheltering for forty years.

She continues to write about and research her Métis heritage and is currently working on a verbatim theatre piece on PTSD.