Abigail Michelini is a Pushcart-prize nominee whose poetry can be found in a wide variety of journals. Her scholarly work has been published in The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics and Writing Center Journal and her debut chapbook, Brace, was published by Thirty West Publishing House in May 2025. She was the 2023 artist-in-residency for the East 40 in Bethlehem, PA, the result of which is a poetry walk anyone can explore in person or here on her website.

In the words of Carl Leggo (2012), Abigail is consistently drawn to ask beyond “is a poem good?” and move towards, “what is a poem good for?” In answering that question, she has found the power of poetry to be simultaneously transformative and pragmatic. Some of the poetic inquiry (research poetry) work she has done includes interviewing Americans across the political spectrum, and then poeticizing their stories and sharing them with folks who disagreed in order to create space for healing and listening across the political divide. Find her TEDx talk on Listening Across the American Political Divide here. Abigail is an Assistant Professor of English and the Honors Program Director at Northampton Community College.