Mike Piero, Ph.D. (he/him) is a bisexual writer and professor in Northeast Ohio. He is Professor of English at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio and specializes in game studies, American cultural studies, postmodernist Anglophone literatures, and critical theory. His scholarly work has recently appeared in Anglica Wratislaviensia, CEA Mid-Atlantic Review, Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture, The Popular Culture Studies Journal, Transnational Literature, MediaCommons, MediaTropes, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, and What Philosophy Can Tell You about Your Lover. He is author of Video Game Chronotopes and Social Justice: Playing on the Threshold (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), a monograph that interprets video game timespace as culture. He is co-editor of Being Dragonborn: Critical Essays onThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (McFarland & Co., 2021).
More recently, his creative writing has appeared or is forthcoming in University College London’s Moveable Type, CUNY’s J Journal: New Writing on Justice, Impost: A Journal of Creative and Critical Work, Midway Journal, and The Sandy River Review, and he’s working on his debut novel, Rogue Burnout. He’s also finishing work on a poetry collection, Midwest Secrets.
Grants, Awards, and Honors
2024 Winner, Millions of Suns Writing Contest, Fiction Category (for “Rituals” short story), University of Michigan Press, March 2024.
2023 Awarded Faculty Innovation Grant (FIG) for Meta Quest 3 purchase and creation of a Humanities-based VR pedagogical repository. $5000 grant.
2022 Awarded Faculty Innovation Grant (FIG) for gaming technology purchase and implementation in English courses. Cuyahoga Community College. $5000 grant.
2022 Professional Improvement Leave (sabbatical), Spring 2022
2020 Recipient, 2020-2021 Mandel Humanities Faculty Fellows Fellowship, “The Chronotope of the Archipelago: Video Games, Archipelagic Maps, and Playing Colonial Conquest.”
2019 Co-recipient of Tri-C President’s Excellence Award for OER ENG 1020 Textbook Creation.
2019 Awarded inaugural Tri-C Teaching and Learning Excellence Grant (Tri-C Foundation) for Honors Program trips and programming, $2000.
2018 Awarded Faculty Innovation Grant (FIG) for research on and implementation of using video games for writing instruction in the composition classroom. Course Release.
2018 Awarded 2018 PCA/ACA Conference Travel Grant for Community College Faculty, $1,000
2016 Awarded 2016-2017 Instructional Professional Development grant to organize a Spring Honors reading series and public event surrounding race relations in Cleveland. Grant also helps support Honors Program. Amount: $1500.00
2015 ENG 2360 British Literature II web-based course earns national Quality Matters (QM) recognition. August 2015.
2015 Awarded a 2015 CCC-AAUP/JFSC Distinguished Service Medal
2015 Recipient of national 2015 Innovation of the Year Award, “Breaking the Tutoring Mold: The CCW Learning Café, WSHCS ‘Under the Stairs,’ and Small Group Tutoring.” League for Innovation in the Community College.
2015 Recipient of Tri-C President’s Excellence Award, Committee on Learning Outcomes Assessment
2014 Awarded 2014-2015 Instructional Professional Development grant to organize a college-wide Coetzee lecture panel. Cuyahoga Community College. Amount: $1000.00
2014 ENG 1020 College Composition II web-based course earns national Quality Matters (QM) recognition
2014 Awarded OACC Student Success Center mini-grant to help fund a college-wide professional development opportunity, $500.00
2013 Awarded Instructional Professional Development (IPD) grant to organize a college-wide workshop on writing assessment best practices, $1720.00, Cuyahoga Community College
2013 Awarded course development grant for first web-based composition courses, $2,000.00, John Carroll University
2011 Awarded the Ann Lesser Award for Best Graduate Essay, John Carroll University
2010 Inducted into Alpha Sigma Nu, the National Jesuit Honor Society
2009 Graduate Assistantship with full tuition waiver, John Carroll University Research Assistantship, Summer 2010, English Dept., John Carroll University Research Assistantship, Summer 2011, English Dept., John Carroll University
