Melanie is a Brisbane-based writer, editor, academic and occasional actor. She is a graduate of QUT’s nationally acclaimed acting program and has a Doctorate in Creative Writing. In 2018, she won the Queensland Literary Awards Glendower Award for an Emerging Writer for her manuscript 'Garrison Town', which was published as Meet Me at Lennon's (UQP) in 2019. Meet Me at Lennon's was shortlisted for the 2020 Queensland Premier's Award for a work of State Significance and the 2020 Courier-Mail People's Choice Award.
Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including Kill Your Darlings, Overland, Arena Magazine, Griffith Review and Hecate, and her short fiction has won or been shortlisted for various literary awards.
She was Artistic Director of Reality Bites Festival from 2012 – 2014. In 2013 she realised a long-held ambition to play Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. She once appeared on the ABC's The Einstein Factor based on her extensive and obsessive knowledge of all things Vivien Leigh. Her hobbies include fussing over her tuxedo cat Moosha and her growing collection of indoor plants.
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Meet Me at Lennon's shortlisted for 2020 Queensland Literary Awards Queensland Premier's Award for a work of State Significance and Courier Mail People's Choice Award
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'The Empathy Machine?' Griffith Review 64: The New Disruptors, April 2019
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Meet Me at Lennon's UQP, September 2019
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'The Promised Land' Kill Your Darlings, November 2018
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Winner Glendower Award for an Emerging Writer, Queensland Literary Awards, 2018
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'White Powder' Third Prize, Estelle Pinney Short Story Competition, 2018
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'The Enthusiastic Amateur' Shortlisted SD Harvey Short Story Award, 2017 & Scarlet Stiletto Awards, 2016
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'Recess' Kill Your Darlings Journal, Issue 24, January 2016, Shortlisted Lane Cove Literary Awards, 2015
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'The Woman Who Loved Those Yanks: The facts and fictions of Maureen C. Meadows narration of that desire' Hecate Vol. 40, Issue 2, 2015 (academic article)
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'Savage Women' Arena Magazine, Issue 33 and Winner Political Edge Prize Scarlet Stiletto Awards, 2014
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'Writers Festivals, Writers Fees' Overland, August 2014
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'Trailer Trash' Shortlisted Scarlet Stiletto Awards, 2012
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'Crit-lit: A Reviewers Guide to the Writers' Festival' Brisbane Times/SMH, September 2011