Michael Rolfe Gira (/dʒəˈrɑː/;[6] born February 19, 1954) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, author and artist.

Now based in New Mexico,[7][8] he founded the band Swans, in which he sings and plays guitar, in New York City in the 1980s at the height of the no wave movement.

[10] Facing the risk of being incarcerated in a juvenile hall, he relocated with his father to Germany[10] following a short stay in South Bend, Indiana.

[11] While in Germany, Gira ran away and hitchhiked across Europe, lived in Israel for a year, and spent four and a half months in an adult jail in Jerusalem for selling hashish.

[14][15] In Manhattan, Gira found employment as a construction worker, doing demolition, sheetrock installation, and plastering.

A marked shift in Swans' music came with inclusion of Gira's partner, Jarboe, who added her ethereal voice and synthesizers to the group in 1985.

Gira and Swans spent the next twelve years releasing studio, live, and side-project albums.

Gira has spoken of his decision to shift his focus from The Angels of Light back to Swans as a move based on impassivity.

It is divided into two parts, the first being "The Consumer", a series of short stories from the early 1990s, the second, "Various Traps, Some Weaknesses", made up mostly of prose-poems and vignettes, all dating from 1983 to 1986.

In a Spike Magazine review of The Consumer And Other Stories, Jordon Leigh Bortle writes, "the squeamish may wish to armour themselves before entering these pages [...] Here, all taboos are annihilated — incest, alcoholism, obscene torture, rape, cannibalism, and perverse murder have all but become the norm in which these tragic tales occur.

[21] In 2022, Gira released a collection of Swans lyrics, stories, and journals titled The Knot, in a collector's edition of 3,000 hand-numbered copies.