Michelle Bowdler’s book, Is Rape a Crime? A Memoir, and Investigation and a Manifesto (2020 Flatiron Books) was longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction and named a Must Read by Time Magazine and the Mass Center for the Book as well as on the best books lists of Publishers Weekly, the Boston Globe and Book Page.

Michelle is a recipient of a Barbara Deming Memorial Award for non-fiction and has been a Fellow at MacDowell and Ragdale. She has been published in the New York Times, Ms. Magazine, Lit Hub, Hippocampus, Brevity and two anthologies: The Anatomy of Silence (Red Press) and We Rise to Resist: Voices from a New Era in Women’s Political Action (McFarland).

Michelle has worked in the public health and higher educations fields on issues of addiction, violence prevention, mental health, sexual health, HIV education and prevention. She has been involved, as well, for over a decade working on social justice issues related to rape and crimes of violence.

Bowdler is a graduate of Brandeis University, where she studied and fell in love with literature and writing, and of the Harvard School of Public Health, where she learned that so much of healthcare access and outcomes have a social and cultural component. 

She is married to a wonderful woman and they have two awesome children.