Welcome to my website. I’m author, Michael R. Ritt, writer of short stories, poems, essays, and a Western novel, The Sons of Philo Gaines. My stories and poems have been published in over a dozen anthologies. Click on the “My Books” tab on the top menu and you can check them out.

I tell people that I am a writer trapped in the body of a Consumer Safety Inspector for the United States Department of Agriculture. An early passion for books turned into a passion for writing while I was in high school, and since then, I have been writing everything; short stories, poems, essays, shopping lists, you name it.

My story, Father Pedro’s Prayer, which appears in the book “The Untamed West,” won the prestigious Peacemaker Finalist Award for best short fiction from Western Fictioneers in 2018. I followed that up in 2019 with another Peacemaker Finalist Award for my story, Aces and Eights, from the anthology “Contention and Other Frontier Stories.” My debut novel, The Sons of Philo Gaines, was a Peacemaker finalist in two categories and won the 2021 Will Rogers Gold Medallion Award in Western Fiction.

I lived for over twenty years in Colorado and Montana with my redheaded sweetheart, Tami. We traveled throughout most of the western states, falling in love with the culture and history of the American West.

In 2023, I retired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and we moved back to Wisconsin to be near our families.

I am a member of Western Fictioneers and Western Writers of America.

I would love to connect with you. Click on the social media buttons at the top of the page or on the “Contact” tab on the menu.

Thanks for stopping by.

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