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 Courier-Mail People's Choice Award. 

Her work has appeared in various publications including Kill Your Darlings, Overland, Arena Magazine, Griffith Review, Hecate and TEXT and her short fiction has won or been shortlisted for various literary awards. In 2021, she received an Individual Funds grant from Arts Queensland to work on her next novel and a Griffith Review Queensland Showcase Fellowship to work on two nonfiction pieces to be published in 2022.

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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. She lives in a converted church on Brisbane's northside with her photographer partner Glenn Hunt. 

Photo credit: Glenn Hunt