Melanie Bishop’s story “Home for Wayward Girls” won the 2022 Jeanne Leiby Chapbook Award and was published by Florida Review in 2023. Her young adult novel, My So-Called Ruined Life (Torrey House Press, 2014) was a top-five finalist for both the John Gardner Award in Fiction, sponsored by University of Binghamton, and the Firecracker Awards, sponsored by Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. 

Bishop has nonfiction in New York Times‘ “Modern Love” column, The Manifest Station, Writers Digest, The Ethel, Next Avenue, Carmel Magazine, and Huffington Post, and short fiction in Glimmer Train, Georgetown Review, Greensboro Review, Florida Review, Potomac Review, Valley Guide, Hospice Magazine, Puerto del Sol, Moria, and The American. Three times she has offered a class on “Writing the Modern Love Essay” for Stanford University’s Continuing Studies program (2019-2022).

Bishop’s cycle of linked stories, Home for Wayward Girls, has been a finalist in seven book contests, including the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and The University of Iowa Press Short Fiction Awards.

Melanie Bishop is Faculty Emeritus at Prescott College, where she taught creative writing and literature for twenty-two years, and was founder and editor of Alligator Juniper, the college’s award-winning, national literary magazine. Currently Bishop offers instruction, editing and coaching through Lexi Services.