Michelle Peñaloza is the author of All The Words I Can Remember Are Poems, winner of the 2024 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor's Choice Award from Persea Books and the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. She is also the author of Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, winner of the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize and two chapbooks, landscape/heartbreak and Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes. Some of her honors include the Frederick Bock Prize from the Poetry Foundation and grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, the Community Foundation of Mendocino County, Upstate Creative Corps, 4Culture, Artist Trust, Literary Arts, and PAWA (Philippine American Writers and Artists). The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, Michelle was born in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. She now lives in Covelo, California.