McGriff was born and raised in Coos Bay, Oregon. His work has appeared in Slate, Field, AGNI,^[1] The Believer, Missouri Review,^[2] and Poetry. He is the founding editor of Tavern Books,^[3] a publishing house dedicated to poetry in translation and the revival of out-of-print books.

McGriff's book Home Burial (Copper Canyon Press, 2012) chronicles the dissolution of a people and their landscape - the coastal Pacific Northwest. His most recent book of poetry, Early Hour, is a book length sequence inspired by German Expressionist Karl Hofer's 1935 painting (Fruhe Stunde^[4]) of the same name.

McGriff currently teaches creative writing^[5] at the University of Idaho.

• Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University^[6]
• Ruth Lilly Fellowship^[7] from The Poetry Foundation
• Michener Fellowship^[8] from the University of Texas at Austin
• 2007 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, for Dismantling the Hills
• 2010 Lannan Literary Fellowship
• 2013 Levis Reading Prize from Virginia Commonwealth University

• "Year of the Rat", Courtland Review, Spring 2009
• Choke. Traprock Books. 2006. ISBN 978-0-9767411-2-1.
• Dismantling the Hills. University of Pittsburgh Press. 2008. ISBN 978-0-8229-6007-2.
• Home Burial (Copper Canyon Press, 2012)
• Black Postcards (Willow Springs Books, 2017)
• Early Hour (Copper Canyon Press, 2017)
• Eternal Sentences (The University of Arkansas Press, 2021)

Anthology edit

• Larry Smith, ed. (2005). Family matters: poems of our families. Bottom Dog Press. ISBN 978-0-933087-95-8.

Translation edit

• "From July ’90", Tomas Tranströmer, AGNI 65, 2007
• "Landscape with Suns", Tomas Tranströmer, AGNI 65, 2007
• Tomas Tranströmer (2009). The Sorrow Gondola. Translator Michael McGriff. Green Integer. ISBN 978-1-933382-44-9.

• "Michael McGriff Q&A recommends two poets", Fishouse