Michaela has had over 150 titles published including poetry, picture books, junior novels and non-fiction. A regular visitor to schools, she works to raise the profile of books, encourage reading for pleasure, inspire creative writing and add extra book buzz.
She has been shortlisted for the BBC Blue Peter Award (twice), the Children’s Book Award and Birmingham Libraries and Surrey Libraries Award and has won a UKRA (now UKLA) award, been an International Reading Association Children’s Choice and a World Book Recommended Read. In 2016 she won the Quick Reads Award for Respect! published by Barrington Stoke. Her 2016 poetry book Wonderland: Alice in Poetry was shortlisted for the prestigious CLiPPA Award for poetry and her 2017 collection Reaching the Stars: Poems About Extraordinary Women and Girls co-authored with Jan Dean and Liz Brownlee won the North Somerset Teachers’ Award.
Her non-fiction work, Walter Tull’s Scrapbook, the account of World War One hero, footballer and first black British army officer, Walter Tull was chosen by the Guardian as one of the 50 best culturally diverse books of all time.
She is about to release a newly updated and extended third edition of her popular How To Teach Poetry: Writing Workshops, (Routledge/David Fulton books) in which she stresses the importance of poetry across the curriculum.
Her hobbies are: lying around and daydreaming, soaking in a bath and daydreaming, walking in the countryside and daydreaming. She also loves to dance.
