Michael McLane

Michael McLane was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. He holds BAs in both English and Anthropology from the University of Utah, and MFA in Creative Writing from Colorado State University, an MS in Environmental Humanities from the University of Utah, and he is currently a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand.

McLane is a founding editor of saltfront: studies in human habit(at) and a contributing editor with Sugar House Review. He is the author of the chapbook Trace Elements (Elik Press) and his poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous journals both in the U.S. and internationally, including Colorado Review, Dark Mountain, Interim, Terrain.org, Utah Historical Quarterly, Denver Quarterly, High Country News, Drunken Boat, The Laurel Review, South Dakota Review, and Western Humanities Review. His work has appeared in anthologies such as Shabda Press’ Nuclear Impact, The Helicon West Anthology, and Torrey House Press’ anthologies Breathing Stories and Sights & Sitelines. Excerpts of his Environmental Humanities thesis, Taking The Waters: Beck Street, Baptism, and Thirdspace can be found on mappingslc.org and were adapted by McLane into walking tours of the area for several nearby cultural entities. His work focuses largely on spaces of environmental conflict or degradation, particularly the nuclear history of the western U.S.

From 2012 to 2019, McLane served as the director of the Utah Center for the Book at Utah Humanities and the Utah Humanities Book Festival, the latter of which was the recipient of a Mayor’s Artist Award in 2014. He has served on the boards of numerous literary non-profits in Utah, including the City Art Reading Series, Zion Canyon Mesa, and Writers@Work. He served as the director of the Young Writers@Work conference for two years and also worked as faculty at the Sawtooth Writers Conference for five years.

McLane currently resides in Wellington, New Zealand but will make it home to Salt Lake soon enough, as he always does.