• Gave reading at N.C. Poetry Society’s Sam Regan Festival in Southern Pines, N.C. June 17, 2006

• Selected by N.C. Poet Laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer as the “Poet of the Week” for June 5-11, 2006. See poems archived at www.ncarts.org (click on Poet of the Week, then look for link to “online archive” in the opening paragraph.)

• “A Kiss of Sorts” published in the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer’s Sunday Journal Feb. 12, 2006

• author of poetry collection, An Invented Hour, available at Osondu Bookstore (Waynesville, NC), City Lights Bookstore (Sylva, NC), and Malaprop’s Bookstore (Asheville, NC).

• “Kaboom” published in Gatherings, a Western North Carolina poetry >anthology, 2001.

Biography

Michael Beadle is a performance poet, author, teacher, writer-in-residence, and award-winning journalist living in Canton, NC. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Journalism from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1994 and started out as a staff writer for community newspapers in Raleigh, Troy and Waynesville, N.C.

After several years acting in community theatre productions, he met the dynamic poetry performer Scott Kinard in Waynesville in 1998. Discovering the art of performing poetry dramatically using audience participation, Michael learned to memorize and perform classical, original, contemporary and children’s poetry. Since 1998, he has been performing professionally and keeps steady bookings for schools, festivals, elderhostels, church and civic groups, and private parties. Several times a year, Scott and Michael get together as The Poetry People and perform at festivals and holiday celebrations.

As a creative writing specialist, Michael has worked with thousands of students from elementary school to senior citizens. Working as an adjunct instructor at Haywood Community College from 1999-2002, he taught and developed the curriculum for two creative writing courses at Central Haywood High School and Tuscola High School and went on to become an English teacher at Tuscola High School from 2002-2005, earning his teaching certificate for 9-12 English.

An A+ Schools Fellow since 1999, Michael also teaches staff development workshops for teachers throughout North Carolina as part of a nationally recognized arts education program based at UNC-Greensboro. He has presented dozens of workshops on school / media relations, the art of advertising, poetry performance, and the art and metaphor of map-making.

Michael is the author of the poetry collection, An Invented Hour (Hard Times Press, 2004) and was published in the Western North Carolina poetry anthology Gatherings (Spring Street Editions, 2001). His play, “The Christmas Mouse,” has been performed as a holiday dance drama by Angie’s Dance Academy in 1999 and 2003 at Haywood Community College.

Michael has published more than 1,500 articles over the past 12 years, and his work has earned four N.C. Press Association Awards for feature writing. His stories have been published in The Durham Herald-Sun, Smoky Mountain Living Magazine, and Business North Carolina. He co-wrote the “Legends of Mountain Music,” an award-winning newspaper series that was selected in 1999 as a Local Legacies heritage winner by the U.S. Library of Congress.

Michael is currently a part-time contributing writer and copy editor for Smoky Mountain News, a weekly alternative newspaper covering Haywood, Jackson, Macon and Swain counties in Western North Carolina.