Michelle Beaver serves as the editor in chief of a national medical magazine, and community teaching artist for Arizona State University's Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. Michelle has reported for the Associated Press and Bay Area News Group and has won national journalism awards. For 20 years she’s freelanced for publications such as Los Angeles Review of Books, PHOENIX Magazine, The Oakland Tribune, The Mercury News, the USA Today Network, Echo Magazine, etc.

She’s also served as editor in chief of five national healthcare magazines that have been nominated for or won many Folio awards. Michelle is the founder of the Arizona chapter of PEN America. PEN, founded in 1922, works at the intersection of literature and human rights to promote free expression in the United States and worldwide, and includes members such as Salman Rushdie, Barbara Kingsolver and Toni Morrison. Michelle plans and hosts statewide PEN events including esteemed speakers.

She wrote a health book for John Wiley & Sons and ghost-wrote a health book for Reader’s Digest. A book she independently published ranked first on Amazon’s list of gay-and-lesbian nonfiction and was the focus of a National Public Radio program. She has edited many fiction and nonfiction books and served as a judge for Fiction500, the Arizona Authors Association, and the TABBIE awards. Her forthcoming novel, Cypher Crew, tells the story of five misfits who unite through hip-hop street dance to save Arizona’s oldest high school from the very people who should be protecting it.