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Michael Salinger (born March 2, 1962) is a poet, performer, and educator living in Northeast Ohio. He is one of the earliest participants in the National Poetry Slam, former board member of Poetry Slam inc., and current director of the organization's summer writing and performance conference. He is the author of teacher professional books and a frequent speaker at teacher conferences and in schools in the US and abroad where he uses performance poetry as a means to better literacy and comprehension skills.

Salinger was a member or coach of the team representing Cleveland, Ohio at the National Poetry Slam a dozen times - making two finals stage appearances. He also emceed the individual finals competition of the National Poetry Slam on several occasions.

He is the founding director of Poetry Slam Inc.'s Poetry Crosstraining Conference - a writing and performance seminar held on the campus of SUNY Oneonta the last week of June.

Salinger is the founding instructor of the Slam U program of the Playhouse Square Foundation in Cleveland Ohio. The second largest performing arts institution after Broadway. Here students learn writing and performance skills and have the opportunity to represent the city at Brave New Voices, the youth national poetry slam.

Salinger began performing his poetry in the mid 80s in and around Cleveland Ohio at venues such as the Pearl Road Auto Wrecking Junkstock festivals, created by Daniel Thompson, and Macs Backs paperbacks in the eclectic Coventry neighborhood.He gravitated into the poetry slam scene by default as it was just starting to take hold. His stage appearances became more elaborate taking cues from the Dada movement and eventually began involving a cast of characters and makeshift scripts and stage directions resulting in the performance art troupe The Nova Lizard Project during the late 80s and early 90s. During this time he married and had two children.

Also at this time he was member of several punk rock bands even though he played no instrument and his vocals were more than suspect. The most infamous being Sleazy Jesus and the Splatter Pigs.

He dropped out of the “scene” in the mid 90s resurfacing in 1998.

The subsequent dozen years Salinger has become a world renowned educational consultant and teaching artist.

He currently lives in Ohio with children’s author Sara Holbrook.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Michael Salinger", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0