Mike writes stories, both for young people and adults. His stories are published online on Storyberries and Voyage YA Literary Journal. And in print in short story anthologies Lockdown Number One and Newcastle Short Story Award. His work has been shortlisted for Wakefield Press' Hometown Haunts anthology, and the Alice Sinclair and Chalk Circle short story competitions. He has articles published in Archer Magazine, The Victorian Writer and AEUNews Magazine.

 

His work-in-progress is an adventure novel for lower YA/upper Middle Grade readers. Its working title is Red Rocket. Recently, it was shortlisted for Penguin Random House’s 2021 Write It Fellowship, along with the Wells Festival of Literature 2020 Book for Children award. 

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Being a boy who once yearned to see kids like him in the books he read, Mike's keen to write under the #ownvoices banner and play his part in making queer characters visible so young readers might see themselves in his stories.

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As a teacher, he's often unsure to what extent he should arm kids with knowledge and develop their agency to actively do something about issues that affect their world, or just allow them to be kids without overburdening them with the weight of the future. His writing is a vehicle to explore this quandary.

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Some of the other experiences that have coloured his lived and written world include projecting 3D IMAX films in London, bisecting Australia’s red desert in a Kombi, furnishing fancy folks’ homes in fabric, getting hitched in pre-marriage-equality Taipei and shaping stuff out of lumps of clay.