Michael Alpert was born in Bangor, Maine in 1945. He received his formal education at the New School for Social Research (B.A., in Humanities, 1968) and the University of Maine (M.L.S., 1972). Alpert has worked for most of his adult life as a publisher and book artist. His private press, Theodore Press/Sarah Books, has published typographical books with significant texts and artist’s books that focus on the structural and visual side of book-arts. Books from Theodore Press/ Sarah Books have been exhibited internationally in museums and galleries. Alpert has also been the designer and production manager for books produced by Stephen King’s Piltrum Press. Alpert oversaw the 1997 production of Stephen King’s The Plant, which was the first e-book published by a major author. Awards granted to Alpert’s publications include the Stephen Harvard Prize for Excellence in the Book Arts, presented by the Baxter Society in 1990, and First Prize for Book Publications from the New England Museum Association, in 2005. Since 1995, Alpert has been employed as director of the University of Maine Press.

In the late 1990s, Alpert shifted his primary artistic attention to photography, after decades of interest in photography as an artform. During the last decade, Alpert’s photographs have been shown in seven one-person shows. Based in Bangor, Alpert continues to create landscape and still-life photographic prints.