Michelle Wildgen grew up in Stow, Ohio, where she frequently skipped church and went out for cheeseburgers at Swenson’s drive-in instead. She would like to think the state remembers her fondly. She’s pretty sure the drive-in does.

In Madison, Wisconsin, she attended the University of Wisconsin, worked for a cheese newspaper and several restaurants, wrote about food for Madison Magazine and books for Isthmus newspaper, got married, and developed a catastrophic shellfish allergy.

In New York she received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and joined the staff of the literary quarterly Tin House Magazine, where she began as an intern and then refused to leave. She is currently senior editor of the magazine and an editor with Tin House Books.

Michelle is the author of a novel, You’re Not You (St. Martin’s/Thomas Dunne, 2006), and the editor of an anthology, Food & Booze: A Tin House Literary Feast (Tin House Books, 2006).

Her fiction, personal essays, and food writing have also appeared in The New York Times, and in anthologies such as Best New American Voices 2004, Best Food Writing 2004, Death by Pad Thai and Other Unforgettable Meals, and journals including StoryQuarterly, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Small Spiral Notebook, Gulf Coast, Salt Hill and elsewhere.

Awards and honors include a scholarship to Bread Loaf, residency at the Hall Farm Center in Vermont, and the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing from Prairie Schooner.