Michael Kleber-Diggs (KLEE-burr digs) is a poet, essayist, literary critic, and arts educator. He is the author of Worldly Things, which won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and was published by Milkweed Editions in 2021. His recent essay, “There Was a Tremendous Softness,” appears in A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars, edited by Erin Sharkey (Milkweed Editions, 2023). His poems and essays often explore themes of intimacy, community, empathy, and grace, practices he believes are simultaneously distinct and interdependent. Michael is a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow in Literature, and he teaches creative writing through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and at universities in the Twin Cities.