Author: Michael J. Grabell

Michael J. Grabell grew up in a single-parent household, the son of a high school Spanish teacher and the grandson of an immigrant window washer from Ukraine.  His poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Best New Poets, North American Review, Southwest Review, and the Best American Poetry anthology among others.  He was a finalist for the 2024 RHINO Founders’ Prize, and his first chapbook, Macho Man, won the Finishing Line Press competition. Outside of poetry, he works as an investigative reporter and editor for ProPublica, where he writes about economic issues, labor, and immigration.  He is a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize — in 2021, as part of a team covering Covid-19, and in 2019, for stories that helped expose the impact of family separation at the border and abuse in immigrant children’s shelters. 

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