Michael Kleber-Diggs JD

Biography

Michael Kleber-Diggs (KLEE-burr digs) is a poet, essayist, arts educator, and podcast host. He is the author of Worldly Things, which won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and was published by Milkweed Editions in 2021. Michael’s second book, My Weight in Water, a memoir about his complicated relationship with lap swimming, will be published in 2028. His poems and essays often explore themes of intimacy, community, empathy, and grace, practices he believes are simultaneously distinct and interdependent.

Michael teaches creative writing through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and at universities throughout the Twin Cities. He also co-hosts, with Erin Sharkey, “Into a Darker Wilderness: the Podcast.”  Among other places, his writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry, Poem-a-Day, Orion Magazine, Literary Hub, Sierra Magazine, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Los Angeles Review of Books, Alaska Quarterly Review, Great River Review, Water~Stone Review, the Under Review, Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, and several other journals and anthologies.

Michael was a 2023-25 Jerome Hill Artists Fellow in Literature, a past Fellow with the Givens Foundation for African American Literature, a past-winner of the Loft Mentor Series in Poetry, a Minnesota AARP 50 over 50 Honoree, and a Poets & Writers Five Over 50 honoree. Michael is married to Karen Kleber-Diggs, a newly-retired tropical horticulturist and orchid specialist. Karen and Michael have a daughter, Elinor, who lives in New York City and works as a professional dancer and choreographer.