Michelle Boyd, PhD is an award-winning writer and scholar, a writing coach and retreat facilitator, and the founder of InkWell Academic Writing Retreats. She spent the first part of her career studying the political significance of black racial identity. In 2008, her book Jim Crow Nostalgia: Reconstructing Race in Bronzeville won a Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association. (Download her CV).

After earning tenure, Michelle focused her research and service on helping scholars better understand their writing process. In 2012 she cofounded and coached a dissertation writing retreat for graduate students studying race and ethnicity. Three years later she founded InkWell, where she specializes in helping stuck, scared scholars free themselves from fear and build a satisfying, sustainable writing practice.

Michelle knows what it’s like to have no time to write, to procrastinate when there is time, and to struggle when the writing is going nowhere. Better yet, she knows–from experience and research–that successful scholars write from the inside out: they turn inward to discover their own writing process.

Michelle has helped hundreds of graduate students and faculty members–from all ranks and a wide range of institutions and inter/disciplines–move past their anxieties and reconnect with what they most love about their writing, and develop a calmer, more confident, more productive writing practice.