Michelle Y. Burke is the author of the poetry collection Animal Purpose, winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, and the poetry chapbook Horse Loquela, winner of the Red Mountain Review Chapbook Series Award. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry, Hopkins Review, Lake Effect, New Orleans Review, and elsewhere. She has received two poetry prizes from the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund, a national poetry prize from the Cultural Center of Cape Cod, an award from the American Literary Review, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center. She holds an MFA in poetry from the Ohio State University and a PhD in English from the University of Cincinnati.

She is an Assistant Professor of the Humanities at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and lives in Massachusetts with her husband, the writer Douglas Watson, and their daughter.