Melanie Thorne earned her MA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Davis, where she worked with Pam Houston and Lynn Freed. Her thesis there was the first draft of what later became her debut novel, Hand Me Down,  which has been widely praised as “compelling” (People) and “impossible to put down” (Book Page), and was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2012.

Melanie has been awarded the Alva Englund Fellowship, the Maurice Prize in fiction, The Florida Review‘s 2016 Editor’s Prize, and a residency at the Hedgebrook Writers’ Retreat. She was a 2014 Virginia Quarterly Review Nonfiction Scholar, a 2015 Tomales Bay Workshops Fellow, and a 2014 Pen Center USA Emerging Voices mentor. Her work has appeared in various literary journals and online publications, some of which you can read here.

Melanie enjoys traveling (though doesn’t do it as much as she wishes), reading (of course), crafting (she is obsessed with pretty paper), singing (usually on key), and spirited conversations (especially about writing).

She currently lives and writes in Los Angeles, where she teaches at the UCLA Extension Writer’s Program, and in private workshops.

Melanie can be reached at melanie.thorne@ymail.com, and on Facebook and Twitter.

For more about Melanie, please visit the Author Q&A and the Interviews & Features pages.