About Michael Garrigan

I write and teach along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. I love exploring the riverlands with a fly rod and believe every watershed should have a Poet Laureate. My writing has appeared in Orion Magazine, The Flyfish Journal, River Teeth Journal, The Hopper Magazine, North American Review, Gray's Sporting Journal, The Drake Magazine, and various anthologies and magazines. I am the author of two poetry collections - River, Amen (Winner of the Weatherford Award for Poetry) and Robbing the Pillars -  and was an Artist in Residence for The Bob Marshall Wilderness. My writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Spiritual Literature, Best Small Fictions Award, and the Pushcart Prize. Feel free to reach out to me if you'd like to order a signed copy of a book, schedule a reading, or go fishing. 

Some Recent Publications

• "Origins According to Stone Swimmer," "Glacier Triptych According to Stone Swimmer," "Black Bear Confronts Her Conjurer" - Evergreen Review
• “Lake According to Stone Swimmer,” “Dead Elk Eats a Rhododendron Bloom and Accidentally Has a Psychedelic Experience” - The Glacier, Issue #4 Winter 2025
• "Dead Elk Attends a Billy Strings Concert," "Dead Elk Hears the Soundtrack to His Biopic Starring Woody Harrelson" - Quarter Notes Magazine, 2.1
• "Dead Elk Listens to the Last Crickets," "Dead Elk Saunters Through a Reclaimed Strip Mine," "Dead Elk Antlers a Constellation" - Cutleaf Journal 5.15
• "Loon Lake Hex Hatch" - Appalachia Journal​, Summer/Fall 2025
• "Landscape Fugues" - Camas Magazine, Summer '25
• "Epistemology:  Seals in Fog" - Split Rock Review, Issue 21
• "Bully Pulpit" - Verse Daily
• "Dead Elk Wakes," "Dead Elk Snores," and "Dead Elk Finds His body" - Talking River Review Fall 2024 Issue 57
• "Sewing Loose Soil" - EcoTheo, December 2024
• "Epistemology:  Gut Road" - Cider Press Review 26.4
• "Susquehanna River Suites" - The FlyFish Journal, Issue 16.1, Fall 2024
• "Dead Elk Considers the Fog" - Whale Road Review, Fall 2024
• "Cataloging the Untrammeled" - Big Sky Journal, Summer 2024
• "Dead Elk Sleeps Next to a Decommissioned Nuclear Power Plant" - Saranac Review, Issue #19
• "Dead Elk Wonders Where His Body Is," "Dead Elk Stares," & "Dead Elk Drifts" - About Place Journal
• River, Amen: Spiritual Skepticism and the Natural World
  Review by Mary Brancaccio on Terrain.org
• "Five Pound Bag of Sour Patch Kids" - Fly Fisherman Magazine, 2023
• River Liturgies - Interview, EcoTheo
• "Grouse Heart Ghazal" - The Dodge, Spring '23
• "Until We Can Till Again," "Driving Home in the Dark...," "Echolocation:  Below the Dam" - Still: The Journal, #41 Winter 2023, The Climate Issue 
• "Communion" - WPSU Poetry Moment & Ruminate Magazine​
• "Why Purple?" - The Fly Fish Journal Summer '22, 13.4
• "Snow Hymns" - River Teeth Journal, 23.1
• "Postindustrial Wilderness" - Orion Magazine

---