Biography

Michael J. Leach is an Australian academic and writer with a background in the health sciences. He started writing poetry and prose in 2011 while completing a PhD in Pharmacoepidemiology at the University of South Australia. Michael is now a Senior Lecturer at the Monash University School of Rural Health, where he undertakes research, teaches across medical and postgraduate degrees, and runs poetry workshops to encourage reflection, empathy, and wellbeing among healthcare students. He is passionate about the interdisciplinary fields of science communication and health humanities.

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Michael regularly publishes, exhibits, and performs his work. His poems have appeared in literary journals, including Cordite Poetry Review and Rabbit – a journal for nonfiction poetry, as well as scientific journals, including the Medical Journal of Australia and The Mathematical Intelligencer. His short stories can be found in The Copperfield Review, Stereo Stories, Painted Words 2017 (Bendigo TAFE, 2017), and elsewhere. Michael's script for a short play called 'The Math' was performed as part of Bendigo Theatre Company's TENX10 Plays 2019. He has exhibited poetry in the Antarctic Poetry Exhibition, the City of Greater Bendigo’s What I Did Last Week: Online Exhibition, and the Write Unto Art and Co.Lab exhibitions at the 2019 Write on the Fringe Festival. Michael has also performed poetry at the Bendigo Writers Festival, The Write Stuff Bendigo events, Pint of Science, and various academic conferences. His poems have been anthologised in Still You: Poems of Illness and Healing (Wolf Ridge Press, 2019), One Surviving Poem: Forty-Two Poets Select the Poem They Most Want to Survive (In Case of Emergency, 2019),  and No News: 90 Poets Reflect on a Unique BBC Newscast (Recent Work Press, 2020). Michael’s debut poetry collection is Chronicity (Melbourne Poets Union, 2020).