Michelle Deines is an award-winning writer who works in multiple genres, including poetry, non-fiction, and drama.
Michelle Deines is middle sister who grew up in rural Vancouver Island without television (and later, only the CBC). Her work is often infused with a love of nature and adventure, two things that figured strongly in the stories of her childhood—which she often took a part in writing. Now, she is an award-winning writer who works in multiple genres, including poetry, non-fiction, and drama. Michelle’s poetry has been published in several magazines, including The Writer’s Café Magazine, Event, and Contemporary Verse 2, and her non-fiction has appeared in such publications as Maisonneuve, Understorey Magazine, and Canadian Dimension. Most recently, her piece “Notre Dame d’Espace” was included in Letters From Montreal, an anthology published by Véhicule Press that is a collection of essays originally published in Montréal’s Maisonneuve Magazine.
Michelle's plays include The Nighthawks, which won the 2019 Yellow Point Drama Group Playwriting Competition and was produced by YPDG in Nanaimo in October 2022, an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility, A Dog at a Feast, and I am the Bastard Daughter of Engelbert Humperdinck (co-written with Kathryn Kirkpatrick). This fall, her play Lost in Wonderland, a modern-day adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, premiered at Capilano University.
Michelle sometimes works as a literary editor and dramaturge, but can most often be found extolling the exciting world of theatre history and playwriting in the halls of Capilano University, where she is a faculty member. She holds a BFA in Theatre and English from the University of Victoria, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She is Artistic Director of Working Spark Theatre, which she founded in 2007.