Author: Michael H. Brownstein
Born: July 17. 10953
Bio: Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published throughout the small and literary presses. His work has appeared in The Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, After Hours, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review and others. He has been featured in a number of on-line journals including chicagopoetry.com, Milk, Muse Apprentice Guild and poetrysuperhighway.com. In addition he has won a number of awards including the Ommation Press Best Chapbook Award and Triton College’s International Poetry Prize. He published The Paper Bag and WYMBS Broadside, wrote for the Chicago Reader and other area newspapers and has an educational column in the SouthStreet Journal and is the elementary school teacher editor for Substance. Brownstein has eight poetry chapbooks including The Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004) and What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005). Presently he performs original one-man performance pieces throughout the Chicago area. Two of these are Ten Times People Attempted to Rob Me and Let’s Eat Grasshoppers Cause Everything Else Tastes Like Chicken.

Brownstein taught elementary school in Chicago’s inner city, studies authentic African instruments with his students, conducts grant-writing workshops for educators and the State of Illinois Title 1 Convention, and records performance and music pieces with grants from the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs, the Oppenheimer Foundation, BP Leadership Grants, and others.