Last fall, Michael Solis moved to Rochester to accept the position of executive director at Writers & Books, a literary arts nonprofit and independent bookstore. Located in the Neighborhood of the Arts, the team there has been bringing readers and writers together for almost fifty years.
“It just felt like the right fit,” says Solis. “I was impressed by the community, the artistic networks, and the people. It’s a really vibrant place, and I feel very fortunate to be part of that.”
Growing up in a multilingual household in New Jersey, Solis felt removed from but curious about his Spanish-speaking relatives. He remembers bonding over the language with his father, a World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) wrestler, learning words on car rides to Madison Square Garden matches. Later, Solis would minor in Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Latin American Studies.
An imaginative kid, Solis was interested in the backstories of video game characters, eventually drawing and creating his own. Although teachers at his public high school praised his writing, he didn’t embrace it until attending college at Princeton, where he was selected for a creative writing class taught by the prolific Joyce Carol Oates.
“I found it very challenging,” says Solis. “How do I turn what’s in my brain visually into just words?” He remembers a day when Oates had a piece of his writing in her hands and said “Michael, now I know you can write.” That was enough to carry him forward.
Solis traveled to Spain, Argentina, and Brazil, falling in love with the languages and gaining perspectives that he wasn’t finding back home in the American media or at school. Passionate about community service, Solis majored in international relations and public policy.
After college, Solis spent a year in South Korea with the Human Rights Commission, documenting the stories of countless people. He met and learned from people such as teachers facing HIV-related discrimination and the “comfort women” of World War II..
He spent time in Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile, and Columbia, discovering a deep connection to the Spanish-speaking world through magical realism and writers like Isabel Allende and Gabriel García Márquez. He realized that reading and writing were the things that he could bring with him anywhere he went.
Solis worked with Trócaire, an organization that aims to “tackle the underlying causes of poverty and injustice,” helping to build programs and raise funds for humanitarian work in Sierra Leone, Kenya, and Geneva, Switzerland, where his work abroad ended abruptly due to funding cuts. While living in Brooklyn and grappling with how to pivot his career while bringing his passion for writing to the forefront of his working life, Solis heard about the position in Rochester.
He is focused on developing long-term sustainability at Writers & Books by growing the endowment fund and working on a user-friendly website and ticketing system. Solis also wants to see the Gell Center, a picturesque twenty-four-acre Naples property used frequently for writing retreats and residencies, heavily subsidize the rates for writers.
“The programming here is really impressive,” says Solis. “I can influence, support, and move things in different directions, but the team is really strong, and I have a lot of trust and confidence in what they do.”
That programming includes Rochester Reads, a city-wide tradition that began with one idea: What if an entire city read the same book? “Year after year the community continues to show up for one of the city’s biggest book clubs,” says Chris Fanning, deputy director of Writers & Books. “It’s a chance for people to connect, share stories, and learn not just from the author but from each other.”
Bookstore coordinator Lily Brunner says, “It’s energizing to see so many people brought together by one book and amazing to witness how much reading can build a community.”
To celebrate twenty-five years of Rochester Reads, Writers & Books will welcome back two beloved authors to St. John Fisher University on November 10: National Book Award winner Omar El Akkad, author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This and Sonja Livingston, author of the award-winning memoir Ghostbread.
Akkad, a war journalist, confronts the American values we espouse in his beautifully written nonfiction novel. “It challenges us with topics that people aren’t really comfortable discussing, the rights and lives of Palestinians being one of them,” says Solis. “We can bring light to a book that is raising so many different things that we need to be talking about but are not and to create space for that discussion.”
In her memoir, Livingston captures her childhood experience of living in poverty with a single mother and six siblings in Rochester. “She actually took her very first creative writing class here at Writers & Books!” says Solis. “In a way, this is where it all began for Sonja. She has taught many classes here, inspired many writers, created a lot of community.”
Solis is enjoying reading all of the Rochester Reads books from 2001 to 2026 as well as exploring restaurants, cafes, and bookstores in his new city. He loves running on the Erie Canal, shopping at the Rochester Public Market, and catching shows at Geva, Blackfriars, and MuCCC.
A local author himself, Solis recently celebrated the rerelease of his debut YA sci-fi novel, Deficient. In a future world where almost everyone is genetically accelerated, Alé Aragón is tormented for his lack of powers. When his best friend vanishes in an ability-related hate crime, he’ll have to confront his deepest fears to solve the mystery and rescue her, teaming up with other outcasts to uncover the truth.
Deficient is dedicated to Solis’s best friend, Tara. “Growing up, we were two peas in a pod,” says Solis. “I was queer in a town that was quite homophobic, while Tara was struggling with Tourette’s syndrome. We supported each other.” The sequel, Feral Rising, comes out on October 15.
Despite being nominated for several prestigious awards, Deficient quickly went out of print when the original publisher closed. Solis decided to create his own small press and republish it himself. Named after one of the stars in Orion’s Belt, Mintaka Press reminds Solis of the feeling of looking into the night sky and imagining the “what ifs” surrounding our existence and purpose.
One of his adult fiction pieces will be published in Image Outright, an anthology. He has also been working on a memoir about his experience growing up as the queer son of a professional wrestler told in vignettes, exploring identity, adventure, and a father-son connection.
Passionate about uplifting voices from the LGBTQAI+ community, Writers & Books has a new initiative called the Rainbow Quill, a flexible fund that supports speakers and teaching artists. “At a time when people from these marginalized communities are not necessarily feeling seen, supported, or heard,” Solis says, “if any organization can do something to help, then why not?”
Fanning thinks Solis has been an incredible addition to his team. “He has fully plugged into the Rochester community,” says Fanning. “I admire his eagerness to meet, connect, and collaborate with as many folks as possible.”
“Michael’s presence can light up any room,” Brunner says. “It’s been so exciting to see how his energy and ideas help shape the future of Writers & Books.”
Learn more about Solis at michaelsolisauthor.com or subscribe to his Substack, Journeys & Words, where he shares essays and reflections on writing, creativity, and life. For more information about Rochester Reads or other local reading and writing related workshops and events, visit writersandbooks.org.
This article originally appeared in the September/October 2026 issue of (585).
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