Michele Santamaría is an Ecuadorian-American poet and librarian. She is the author of the poetry collection, Color Advisory Board (Gunpowder Press, 2026), winner of the 2025 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize. Michele’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Rhino, Harpur Palate, The Shore, The Canary, Bellingham Review, and Cimarron Review, among others. As a poet-librarian, she published a chapter about poet-librarianship in Poet-Librarians in the Library of Babel and co-wrote a book about teaching research through social media engagement.

Michele received her MFA in poetry from University of Oregon, her MLitt in anthropology from University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and her MS in Library Science from Long Island University. Michele’s poems are informed by these fields of study and by her experiences living in and between the Americas.

She received a scholarship from the Breadloaf Writer’s Conference, and has served as a poetry reader for Clemson University’s South Carolina Review and as a senior poetry reader for Washington College’s Cherry Tree. Michele has also taught poetry to all age groups. She lives with her family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and works at Millersville University as the Learning Design & Student Engagement librarian, where she emphasizes the role of wonder in students’ research processes.

Author photo by Melissa Engle Photography.