In 1997, Michael Henry (he/him) co-founded Lighthouse Writers Workshop in partnership with Program Director Andrea Dupree. They came up with the idea of running their own creative writing workshops under the name “Lighthouse” while looking at an Edward Hopper painting, “Lighthouse at Two Lights.” When the organization officially became a nonprofit organization in 2004, Michael was named Executive Director. 

At Lighthouse and elsewhere, he’s led workshops for advanced poets and nonfiction writers as well as community-focused workshops for adults living with cancer, critical care workers, at-risk youth, and generative workshops in museums and other art centers.

His nonfiction and poetry have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines such as Elevation Outdoors, Ekphrastic Review, Hippocampus, Threepenny Review, Pleiades, Copper Nickel, Rio Grande Review, Georgetown Review, Mountain Gazette, The Writer, and 5280 Magazine. He's also published two poetry collections, No Stranger Than My Own and Active Gods, and a chapbook, Intersection, as well as a nonfiction book, Mountain Biking the Colorado Trail. 

In 2017 he was awarded a prestigious Livingston Fellowship from the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, and in 2018 he received the Judy Anderson Founders Award from PlatteForum.