About Michelle Kuo

Michelle Kuo is the author of the memoir READING WITH PATRICK, a story of race, inequality, and the transformative power of literature. The book was a runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Reading Women Award, and shortlisted for Goddard Riverside Stephen Russo Book Prize for Social Justice. It has been honored as a community reads pick at programs across the United States, including Washtenaw Reads, University of Iowa Center for Human Rights, and Yale Prison Education Initiative.

Michelle has taught English at an alternative school in the rural town of Helena, Arkansas, located in the heart of the Mississippi Delta.

After graduating from Harvard Law, she became an immigrants’ rights lawyer at Centro Legal de la Raza, a nonprofit in Oakland, California. She advocated for tenants facing evictions, workers stiffed out of their wages, and families facing deportation.

Michelle is a passionate advocate of prison education and criminal justice, and has volunteered at the Prison University Project at San Quentin Prison.

The daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, Michelle grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

She is currently an assistant professor at the American University of Paris in the History, Law, and Society program. She has written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Point, Public Books, and other publications.

As Pulitzer Prize-winning James Forman Jr. and Arthur Evenchik write in The Atlantic, "Impassioned writing and hard-earned wisdom set her book apart ... In all of the literature addressing education, race, poverty, and criminal justice, there has been nothing quite like Reading With Patrick.”