ABOUT.

Michal ‘MJ’ Jones (they/he) is an award-winning poet, parent, and editor living in Oakland, CA. Their poetry has appeared in the American Academy of Poets, Obsidian, Split This Rock, Muzzle Magazine, TriQuarterly Review, ANMLY, & elsewhere. Their debut collection of poetry, HOOD VACATIONS, won the 2024 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry. They are also the author of a chapbook, SOFT ARMOR (2023), from Black Lawrence Press. Often addressing the troubling and haunting aspects of life, violence, and identity, MJ’s poetry blends lyrical, documentary, and confessional modes. 

From 2022-2024, MJ served as as the Editor-In-Chief of Foglifter, an award-winning literary journal publishing radical work by LGBTQIA2-S writers. They have been awarded fellowships from Lambda Literary, Hurston/Wright Foundation, and VONA/Voices. They received their MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College in 2021, where they also received the distinguished Community Engagement Fellowship. An engaged literary citizen, they have repeatedly served on individual artist review panels for the cities of Berkeley and San Francisco, and as both assistant and final judge of the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Winning Writers. Their personal and political essays have been featured in Everyday Feminism, Black Girl Dangerous, The Body Is Not An Apology, and other venues.

They are currently busy raising their young child, Glory – their greatest muse – and completing their second full length poetry collection.