Michael is a writer and photographer born in Florida as a first-generation American to Austrian and South African parents. He contributes toThe New York Times, The Bitter Southerner, and The Surfer's Journal among other magazines and newspapers.
Over the past few years, he was nominated for the Smithsonian’s Artist Research Fellowship in Washington, D.C., a recipient of the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation Fellowship, and an artist-in-residence at the Hermitage Artist Retreat. In 2018, he began his first book about a traumatic brain injury's effect on his family and treatment of the injury in America as a fellow at the Key West Literary Seminar in Florida.