Mike Phoenix

Mike Phoenix was born in Lawrence, Kansas but spent his youth in Portland, Oregon. He earned a BA in English from the University of Oregon in 1977 and taught high school English in Valsetz, a company-owned logging town in the Oregon Coast Range. After work as a copy-aide and free-lance writer for the Oregon Journal newspaper in Portland, he returned to the Midwest to earn an MFA in Theater in 1985 from the University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale. He saw his original plays presented in Carbondale and Aurora, IL; Starkville, MS; Toronto, ONT; Arcata and San Francisco, CA; Portland, OR and St. Louis, MO. He directed six, mainstage theater productions at Kirkwood High School in Kirkwood, Missouri, and taught remedial writing and college composition at St. Louis Community College at Meramec.

Phoenix has spent the following 32 years with St. Louis Public Schools as an English Teacher, Professional Development Manager, and Computer Literacy Instructor. Phoenix and his wife Rebecca have three children, three grand-children, and have made their home in St. Louis, Missouri since 1988. He earned his Doctorate in Education from the University of Missouri at St. Louis in 2016.