Biography:

Michelle Petties is an author, speaker, and food addict in recovery. Her memoir, Leaving Large – The Stories of a Food Addict, a category winner in The 2022 Memoir Prize for Books, features the award-winning essay, The Cake is in the Mail. After gaining and losing over 700 pounds, Michelle developed a process for making peace with her mind, body, and food. Her memoir illustrates how events, experiences, and memories inform our beliefs, attitudes, and habits around food, eating, and hunger. Michelle now teaches others how to find, face, rewrite, and replace their food stories during healing-through-writing-and-storytelling workshops and retreats.