About

Michelle Ott

Poet and writer Michelle Ott was born in 1998 and raised in Northern Virginia. She discovered her innate knack for poetry at a young age, and began earning awards and recognition for her work on the local and national level as a teenager. After a brief foray into the world of STEM in college, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in chemistry and mathematics from the College of William & Mary in 2020, she spent her first year of pandemic-addled post-grad reinvesting in her love for the written word. She earned her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from American University in 2023, where she served as the Community Outreach Coordinator for the university’s literary magazine, FOLIO, and also as a contributing writer for the program’s student-run blog, CaféMFA. Her poetry has been featured in The Talon Review, The Mid-Atlantic Review, BOOTH Magazine, and Impostor: A Poetry Journal, who nominated her poem “Where I Find You” for a 2025 Best of the Net Award. She is currently working on releasing her first full-length poetry collection, Sonata for Empty Hands, as well as dipping her toes into the world of fiction as she writes her first science fiction novel. She currently lives in Richmond, Virginia with her feline editorial assistant, Goldfish.