Background

Michael Finley was born on July 4, 1950 in Flint, Michigan, United States to the family of a sales engineer Paul Finley and a business owner Mary Konik. He grew up in northeast Ohio - in the small cities of Amherst and Vermilion.

Education

Finley graduated from Marion L. Steele High School in 1967. He studied at College of Wooster in 1967-1969 and received the Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Minnesota in 1972.

Career

In St. Paul Finley worked as a security guard in a menswear store, writing poems and stories and reviews by the light of the moon. It was easy to publish in those days because paper plate printing was cheap, so he got accepted in hundreds of magazines. He was offered an editor job at the University of Minnesota. At one point he heard Robert Bly advise writers not to publish, too soon. He dropped out of the poetry scene and lived as a journalist and ghostwriter, writing poetry only on the side.

In the 1990s Finley became one of the first digital publishers, reissuing his six chapbooks as e-books. Kraken Press took off, and today he has had about 2.5 million downloads - who they are, or why they downloaded, he has no idea.

In 1995, Finley's nonfiction title, Why Teams Don't Work, was named "The Americas Best Business Book," by the Financial Times Global Business Awards. He has also won a Pushcart, plus various other honors. Currently, Mike Finley lives at Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Achievements

• Mike Finley managed to establish a successful publication mechanism though digital publisher Kraken Press, which allows him to independently publish his works and of his associates. Today he has had about 2.5 million downloads of his between 100 and 300 published titles.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Ripples Of September 11 - Shattered Images From Ground Zero To Cities North, South, East, And West

    (How does September 11, 2001, look now to someone who live...)

    2011
  • Transcompetition: Moving Beyond Competition and Collaboration

    (Finally there is a radical new approach to succeeding in ...)

    1998
  • Why Change Doesn't Work: Why Initiatives Go Wrong and How to Try Again and Succeed

    (Unlike the changemongers pitching the latest blueprint fo...)

    1996
  • Peterson's Techno-Crazed: The Businessperson's Guide to Controlling Technology-Before It Controls You

    (Focusing on the work issues brought on by computers, soft...)

    1995
  • Ripples Of September 11 - Al Qaeda Kids

    (How does September 11, 2001, look now to someone who live...)

    2011
  • Home Trees 1978
  • Why Teams Don't Work: What Went Wrong and How to Make It Right 1995
  • The Accidental Leader - What to Do When You’re Suddenly in Charge 2004
  • Lucky You 1976
  • Making Ethical Decisions - Jane Fulton On The Ethics Of Balancing Life And Death 2011
  • The movie under the blindfold 1978

Membership

• Foundation seeking to help Twin Cities punks.

  Robots & Pirates , United States

  1969

• 

  The Loft Literary Center , United States

  1976 - 2019

Personality

Finley discovered hip poetry in a Cleveland bookstore in his youth. The poets there were funny and dark and rebellious and he set out to be just like them.

A college dropout, Finley traveled around the country having Kerouackian experiences and writing. He was the kind of young man who would hitchhike to a girl’s house 700 miles away, knock on her door, cry “Ta-da!“ on the front porch and expect people to take him in and feed him. Amazingly, one did, which is how he wound up in St. Paul, where he finished school and has lived most of his adult life.

Connections

Mike Finley married Rachel Frazin on June 25, 1981. They had two children, Daniele, who died in 2009, and Jonathan, a guitar composer.

Father:

Paul Finley

Mother:

Mary Konik

Daughter:

Daniele Finley

Died in 2009.

Son:

Jonathan Finley

co-author:

Harvey Robbins

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 166 This volume of Contemporary Authors contains biographical information on approximately 300 modern writers.
  1998