Michael Bickford was born in Los Angeles, and escaped north. After an extensive street education, he graduated with a BA and a teaching credential from San Francisco State University. In 1990, he moved with his wife and their two children from San Francisco to the unceded land of the Wiyot people on California’s Redwood Coast. Mr. Bickford taught middle school for 30 years in San Francisco and Eureka, CA.

Michael is a fellow of the Redwood Writing Project of Cal Poly Humboldt and a founding member of Lost Coast Writers Community, Inc. He writes poetry and fiction in Arcata, California. His work has appeared in Abandoned Mine, Fauxmoir, Seven Gill Shark Review, Ink People Center for the Arts, The North Coast Journal, Behind the Mask: 40 Humboldt Poets on the Pandemic, and The /tEmz/ Review. Neologism Poetry Review will feature one of Michael’s poems in May, 2024.

His dual-language chapbook, Mrs. Silva Walks to the Azores, A Story in Ten Cantos (with Portuguese translation by 2023 National Book Award winner Bruna Dantas Lobato) is forthcoming this summer from The Finishing Line Press.