Mike Pulley

 

Mike Pulley is an award-winning journalist, poet, and teacher.

 

As a journalist, Mike Pulley has published more than 2,000 news articles and features for a number of leading daily and weekly newspapers including the San Francisco Examiner, the Sacramento Bee, and the Sacramento News & Review. He has covered a diverse range of offbeat and controversial subjects, including the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, hate crimes, Scientology, police corruption, train hopping, prostitution, alternative medicine, and medical marijuana. A 1987 investigative series on a mentally-ill murderer won Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI) awards. From 1991 to 1993, Pulley provided business news broadcasts for local segments of National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered" on FM stations KXPR (Sacramento) and KXJZ (Sacramento). For many years, Pulley focused on the business of healthcare, writing articles for a number of technical journals and trade publications.

 

Poetry

Most recently, Pulley’s poems have appeared in Cold Mountain Review, South Carolina Review, Canary, Café Review, and the Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology, among others. He was a finalist for the 2013 New Ohio Review poetry contest, and in 2008 he was named a Pioneer Poet by the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission and included in its Poets on Deck project. For two years, Pulley served as a board member of the Sacramento Poetry Center and co-edited its Poetry Now journal. He also guested edited an edition of the Center’s Rivers journal: “Eden, 1992”: Poems from the Time Tested Books Reading Series. For five years, he organized and emceed some of Northern California’s most distinguished poetry readings, events that featured many of California’s acclaimed poets, including San Francisco Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman and Sacramento Poet Laureates Dennis Schmitz and Jose Montoya.

 

Pulley’s poems have been praised by some of the country’s leading writers. The legendary novelist William T. Vollmann said Pulley’s work is "a cross between (Allen Ginsberg's) 'Howl' and (Arlo Guthrie's) 'Alice's Restaurant.' A sweetly wide-eyed attitude to life."

 

"He reminds me of Kerouac," said Jack Micheline, the late San Francisco folk artist and bohemian poet, introducing Pulley at a San Francisco reading in the mid-1990s.

Teaching

After 15 years as a full-time professional writer, Pulley began teaching in 2001. He completed a Master’s in English and served as a lecturer at California State University, Sacramento, teaching courses such as Basic News Writing and Freshman Composition. Since 2008, he has been a lecturer in the Clemson University English Department and was promoted to senior lecturer in 2013. At Clemson, he teaches Technical Writing, Science Writing, Business Writing, and Twentieth/Twenty-First Century Literature. He also organizes and emcees Clemson’s annual Writers’ Harvest literary reading, an event that helps feed hungry children in Upstate South Carolina.

 

Born William Michael Pulley in Rome, Georgia, Pulley was raised in Georgia and the Carolinas. He completed undergraduate work in Philosophy at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, and was named president of the university’s award-winning debate team. After moving to California, he completed a Bachelor’s in Communication Studies at California State University, Sacramento in 1985. He served as an intern for California State Representative Lloyd Connelly (D-Sacramento) and went on to become one of Northern California’s most notable journalists. He has lived in Easley, South Carolina since 2008.