Michele is not only an author, she is a college professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a creativity coach. She works with students in women's and gender studies and authors to improve their ability to tap into their creativity.

Her story, Reenu-You, is a post apocalyptic story where civilization is destroyed through a hair care product. As far as she knows, it's the only post-apocalyptic story using hair relaxer as the downfall of civilization. She has gone through Falstaff books, so knows traditional, indy, and hybrid publishing.

Transcript:

Stephen 0:50Welcome to Episode Seven of discovered wordsmiths. I appreciate you taking the time to listen and I hope you've been finding something interesting. And finding some new authors to go read about find out more about discovering some new wordsmiths that are out there. I wanted to make a note on this particular episode. I am talking with Michelle t Berger, about her novella Renu you, and the internet was acting up a little bit. We had some issues with it. So you may hear some dropouts, you may hear some bad wording, it may sound funny, and I apologize for that we did the best we could edit in it. But I do hope you enjoy it. There's a lot to learn from Michelle. She is a professor that writes and helps other authors by coaching. So sit back, listen to what Michelle has to say about her journey to the published word. And I hope you enjoyed the show and will subscribe and give us a review. It would really help a lot. Thanks. Here's Michelle. So, Michelle, tell us a little bit about yourself. Outside of being a writer, you mentioned your professor, tell us about that and the rest of your life a little bit. Yeah,

Michele 2:06so I will say that I am a speculative fiction writer, I write kind of across this specula fiction universe, so sci fi, modern fantasy, magical realism. But everything I write tends to have a hard edge or element to it. And I also am a creativity coach. And so I work with people to help them realize their dreams and remove obstacles to pursuing more of what they love to do in life. And I've been writing, I would say, I've been writing seriously, for the last at least 10 years. And then the 10 years before that I was writing. And in a what I like to say seeming like more like metaphorically in the basement. And like I was writing without community. And I would just rewrite parts of the novel that probably will never see the light of day, even though I've mined it, but I would just kind of rewrite that. And I would read craft books, and I would think to myself late I'm really clever, and why can't I just figure this out? Well, um, you know, I think if I hadn't met my writing teacher and mentor friend, Marjorie Hudson, about 10 years ago and kind of gotten into the literary community and done some other things, I probably would have given up to be quite honest. Because I think once you're in your late 30s, early 40s, and if you've had this desire to write, and you haven't seen that fulfilled, it gets harder to do that, because you obviously have other kinds of life phase issues. So for people who are artistically inclined, and they keep going, you know, usually by your 40s, you're starting to see the kind of payoff of that.

Stephen 3:44So you said, you're a professor, what are you a professor of what do you teach?

Michele 3:50So I'm at University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, I'm in the department of Women's and Gender Studies, and I do research primarily on gender and racial health disparities.