Celebrated author of six books.

Michael is a writer, poet and medical sociologist. A Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and Co-Director of the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health. He is also Editor of The Perch: An Arts & Literary Journal, Director of the Citizens Community Collaborative, , and Co-Director of the Collaborative for Nonjustice Studies (nonjustice = to refrain from seeking justice through revenge). 

A writer before he was a sociologist, he is the author of fiction, narrative nonfiction, plays, and poetry. His theater work included wright, acting, and directing for the Exit Experimental Theater Company, Theater That, the Renaissance Theater Company, and the Boston Post Road Stage Company, with publication of two of his plays in Four from the Exit Etc. As a poet, he was mentored by Leo Connellan, Connecticut's Poet Laureate (1996-2011) and winner of the Shelley Memorial Prize. As a writer of fiction, his novel Cold Spring (under review), imagines an actual event—the nation’s first municipal identity card, intended to help undocumented immigrants-- gone haywire.

Michael’s academic-research topics include homelessness and community mental health care, citizenship as a response to social inclusion, narrative medicine, and medical errors. His books based on this work, and other full-length nonfiction, are what he called ‘scholarly literature’—intended for general readers as well as academics. 

Michael lives in Connecticut and lectures widely in the U.S. and internationally.

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