Michele has been the photo editor of the Portland Press Herald for five years. Previously she was a photographer for the Boston Globe, The Virginian-Pilot, and the Concord Monitor. She began her journalism career as a reporter/photographer for the Daily Eagle, in Claremont, NH. Michele’s first camera was a Kodak Brownie Starflash camera, which she got when she was 9. She used it to take unusual family photos, like one of her youngest sister Megan refusing to move from the neighbor’s driveway. (Megan McDonald is the author of the Judy Moody and Stink series, well-known books for children). Michele still has the camera. It has a roll of undeveloped film in it, which she’ll get around to developing someday. A college dropout (from Bensalem, an experimental college that no longer exists), Michele later won a mid-career Nieman fellowship to Harvard. She was a finalist for a feature photography Pulitzer Prize for her photos of a young woman choosing to die in hospice care. She was a juror for the Pulitzer prizes in photography in 2017, 2018 and 2019.