Michaella Henry

Author Bio

Michaella Henry is a neurodivergent emerging writer, poet, and first-generation Afro-Caribbean American. A born storyteller and a cultivated writer, Michaella finished her first 650-page book manuscript as a teenager, in a format that no one will ever see. Michaella graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College, where she won several prizes for her prose writing. With a foundation in computer science and psychology, she’s shaped digital experiences as a user experience designer and user experience writer, crafting interface and communications content for tech industry leaders such as HP, Oracle, and Dell Technologies.Michaella's extensive travels and several experiences living abroad inform her cultural compassion and sensitivity to dialogue in her prose pieces. Michaella's fiction explores various cultures, identities, obsessions, and their nexus. Her creative nonfiction and poetry confront mental resilience, gender equity, social inequality, and disability. She is at work on a transnational, experimental novel of literary fiction that explores the privilege of statehood, grief, and social media intoxication. That debut novel incorporates Haitian, Zimbabwean, and South African worlds and folktales. When she allows her writing to breathe and exist beyond her immediate control, you can find it at michaellahenry.com/writing. Michaella has mostly lived in a liminal space. She's based between Boston and Los Angeles, and is often, reluctantly, in the sky.

A non-exhaustive list of some reading favorites:

Novels

If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga Cécé by Emmelie ProphèteWe Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie YaniqueSalvage the Bones by Jesmyn WardComfort Woman by Nora Okja KellerPush by Sapphire
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala
Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid
Love by Toni Morrison
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Short Stories

Story Collections and Anthologies: Somehow Tenderness Survives, selected by Hazel Rochman
Girls At War by Chinua Achebe
Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan
The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans
The Best American Short Stories, 2018, edited by Roxane Gay
All That Work and Still No Boys by Kathryn Ma

Stories:
“Dosas” by Edwidge Danticat
“The Sex Lives of African Girls” by Taiye Selasi
“Minutes of Glory” by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o
“Silver Water” by Amy Bloom
“The Semplica Girl Diaries” by George Saunders
“Whose Heart I Long To Stop With the Click of a Revolver” by Rivers Solomon
“Apollo” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“Lawns” by Mona Simpson
“Before Tonde, After Tonde” by Petina Gappah
“The Era” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
“Second Place is the First Loser” by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu
“Two Kinds” by Amy Tan
“A Small, Good Thing” by Raymond Carver
“The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado
“Country Lovers” by Nadine Gordimer
“ID” by Joyce Carol Oates
“The Rememberer” by Aimee Bender
“Who’s Irish” by Gish Jen

Creative Nonfiction

Memoirs:
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat
Solito by Javier Zamora
The Body Papers by Grace Talusan
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr
Dear Senthuran by Akwaeke Emezi
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
Heavy by Kiese Laymon
Educated by Tara Westover
What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo

Essays:
“Sliver of Sky” by Barry Lopez
“White Horse” by Eliese Colette Goldbach
“Haywire” by Heather Sellers
“Cost of Living” by Emily Maloney
“Europe’s Child Refugee Crisis “by Lauren Collins
“Lucky Girl” by Bridget Potter
“Names” by Paul Crenshaw
“Travels with my Ex” by Susan Straight
“Scenes from a Life in Negroland” by Margot Jefferson

Poetry

Poetry Collections: Bless the Daughter Raised By a Voice in Her Head by Warsan Shire
Look by Solmaz Sharif
When I Grow Up I Want to be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen
How to Carry Water by Lucille Clifton
Whereas by Layli Long Soldier
Three Leaves, Three Roots by Danielle Legros Georges
Glitter Road by January Gill O’Neil
Then Winter by Chloe Honum
Poems from East Africa edited by David Cook and David Rubadiri

Poems: “Won’t You Celebrate with Me” by Lucille Clifton “I Never Figured How To Get Free” by Donika Kelly“Self-Portrait As So Much Potential” by Chen Chen “Bullet Points” by Jericho Brown“American Dreams” by Julia Alvarez “Birth of the Nation” by Jameka Williams “Blurred Vision” by Mahogany Brown “June 20th” by Lucille Clifton“Intrigue in the Trees” by John Brehm “How Poems Arrive” by Anne Stevenson“The Waking” by Theodore Roethke “This Is Not a Small Voice” by Sonia Sanchez “We Lived Happily During the War” by Ilya Kaminsky“Skin Deep” by Nkosi Nkululeko“Begin here” by Lucille Clifton“The Opposites Game” by Brendan Constantine “Aftertaste” by Shira Erlichman “Things That Happened to Me in High School” by Lauren Zuniga“13 Or How OkCupid Told My Mother I Had The Devil Living Inside Me” by Tonya Ingram“How We Forget” by Loyce Gayo “Pocket-Sized Feminism” by Blythe Baird “Stay” by Jericho Brown“Water Sign Woman” by Lucille Clifton“Forget” by Adrienne Kennedy

Want to chat books?: writing@michaellahenry.com or

@michaella_writes on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram

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