Michelle Bitting                                                Poet

                                                                                               

820 Bienveneda Avenue
Pacific Palisades, CA 90272
ph: 310-454-5478
fax: 310-454-5478
alt: 310-350-0155

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Michelle grew up in Los Angeles near the ocean.  A fourth generation Angeleno, she wrote poems in college at U.C. Berkeley where she studied theatre.  She enjoyed careers as a dancer and a chef before marrying Phil Abrams, the actor, and giving birth to their two beautiful children, Elijah and Verarose.  In 2001 she began writing and publishing in earnest often scribbling poems in parking lots while she waited for her eldest to finish school, her youngest asleep in the backseat. 
In addition to years of dance, music, and culinary arts training, Michelle has worked part-time since 1998 in the toddler and preschool programs at a local parochial school in Pacific Palisades.  Last year she was awarded a grant to collaborate with the non-profit CDI (California Dance Institute) implementing a poetry component to their LAUSD inner city middle school performing arts program.  Michelle has been involved in hands-on outreach to the sick, hungry, and homeless for over a decade.  To anyone interested in donating to an outstanding humanitarian aid program she suggests GAIA - the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance organization. 

Michelle's work has been published or is forthcoming in Glimmer Train, Swink, Prairie Schooner, Narrative Magazine, Poetry Daily, Poetry Southeast, Southeast Review, Nimrod, Crab Orchard Review, Passages North, Small Spiral Notebook, Many Mountains Moving, Gargoyle, Slipstream, Phoebe, Mudfish, Clackamas Literary Review, Dogwood, Rattle, Pearl, and others. 

She won the Glimmer Train Poetry Open (2003), the Poets on Parnassus (2004), and Rock and Sling's Virginia Brendemuehl (2005), poetry competitions.  Individual poems have been finalists for numerous national poetry contests as has her full length book "Good Friday Kiss."

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She is also pleased to announce that Finishing Line Press published her chapbook, Blue Laws in December, 2007.

Click here to purchase

GOOD NEWS!
Thomas Lux chose Michelle's manuscript

"There is something about these poems that is so immediate, so unflinching, so focused and visceral in their understatement, that I was, on first reading, astonished.  On second reading I was astonished and deeply moved.  On third reading I was astonished, deeply moved, and filled
with joy!"
 --Thomas Lux,
De Novo Judge - 2008
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820 Bienveneda Avenue
Pacific Palisades, CA 90272
ph: 310-454-5478
fax: 310-454-5478
alt: 310-350-0155