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Chicago, Illinois 60626
United StatesMichael McColly holds degrees from Indiana University (BA General Studies Theater and English), The Divinity School at University of Chicago (MA Religious Studies), and University of Washington (MFA Creative Writing—Fiction). Before beginning his writing and teaching career, he acted in Chicago and worked as the Director of Adult Education at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. He currently is a lecturer, teaching creative nonfiction at Northwestern University.
His memoir The After-Death Room: Journey into Spiritual Activism will be out in the spring of 2006 (Soft Skull Press). The memoir blends reportage and interviews as he chronicles his journey through several countries effected by the AIDS epidemic—South Africa, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Senegal and urban America—Chicago. The book focuses on interviews with AIDS activists, NGO’s, doctors, social workers, clergy and people like himself who are HIV positive. As he has traveled, he has published journalism, Op-Ed pieces and essays on the AIDS epidemic in The New York Times, Salon, The Chicago Tribune, The Sun, Ascent, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and other literary journals. He frequently speaks on the international AIDS pandemic at universities and forums in and around Chicago.
Over the last decade he has won numerous honors for his writing and work: The Lisagor Journalism Award for a series on Chicago’s neighborhoods for WBEZ Public Radio, two PEN Grants for writers living with HIV/AIDS; prose awards from the Illinois Arts Council and Illinois Humanities Council; as well as receiving several fellowships at MacDowell, Yaddo, Blue Mountain Center, and Ragdale.
McColly is a board member of The Guild Complex, a community organization that develops literary programs to support cross-community dialogue in Chicago. He works with people living with HIV offering yoga seminars as well as teaches in classes in his neighborhood. He also attends a Buddhist fellowship that regularly meets with prisoners at a state prison in Indiana.
Added on 05-24-2006 Updated on 05-24-2006 |
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