Tea was the co-founder of the Sister Spit spoken word tour. She has toured with the Sex Workers' Art Show alongside Ducky DooLittle and others. She is also a contributor to The Believer magazine and is the co-writer of the weekly astrology column, Double Team Psychic Dream with astrologer Jessica Lanyadoo, in the San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper.

In February 2008, Michelle was the 23rd Zale Writer-in-Residence at the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College Institute at Tulane University. She did not go to college, and the assumption that she has she has discussed in interviews.

While touring together in the year 2000, Tea and writer Clint Catalyst came up with the idea to solicit first-person narratives for their 2004 anthology Pills, Thrills, Chills and Heartache. Described by Publishers Weekly as a "celebrat[ion of] the avant-garde," the book, which includes work by Dennis Cooper and Eileen Myles reached #10 on the Los Angeles Times non-fiction paperback bestseller list in its first week of release. Moreover, the book was a 2004 Lambda Literary Awards finalist in the Anthologies/Fiction category. Indeed, her books have won a nomination in the competition virtually every year since her Valencia won for best Lesbian Fiction in 2000.