Mitchell Nobis is a writer, a teacher, a dad with a thousand stories about their journey to adopt two incredible boys, an aging rec-league basketball player held together by duct tape & hope, a transplanted farmboy, a former drummer, and probably some other things. He lives in Metro Detroit with his wife and children and the family dog.

He has a number of poems and teacher essays out in the world and novels in draft. His debut poetry collection, The Size of the Horizon, or, I Explained Everything to the Trees, is now available from Match Factory Editions.

He hosts Wednesday Night Sessions, the KickstART Farmington reading series. For years he tweeted jokes about not being able to attend the AWP writers conference and attending “Not at AWP” instead while doing laundry. Then Jared Beloff said “Let’s make that a thing,” and they co-founded NAWP. He will soon be on the poetry staff of The Weight literary journal. Previously he was a poetry reader for Bracken Magazine and has guest-edited at other literary magazines. He has an MA in teaching English but no MFA. He took a couple of creative writing classes at the local community college once, though.

His poetry has been nominated for the Best of the Net awards and the Pushcart Prize. His short story “How Many Times We Pray” recently earned his first fiction nomination for the Best of the Net.

He is a past president of the Michigan Council of Teachers of English and a former co-director of the Red Cedar Writing Project, where he led dozens of professional learning events for teachers of writing. He created the RCWP Writers Workshop and facilitated it for its first eight years. He now facilitates the Teachers as Poets group for the National Writing Project in the online Write Now Teacher Studio space. He co-authored Real Writing: Modernizing the Old School Essay, a book for writing teachers.

Find him on Bluesky and probably some others at @MitchNobis.

_{(Top photos courtesy of Dwayne Hayes at KickstART Farmington. Bottom photo courtesy of Franklin Nobis.)}

© 2025 Mitchell Nobis