Photo Credit: Ada Donnelly

Lynn Melnick

b. 1973

Current City, State, Country

Brooklyn, New York, USA

Birth City, State, Country

Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

Biography

Lynn Melnick is the author of the memoir, I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma Persistence, and Dolly Parton (University of Texas Press, 2022).

She is also the author of three poetry collections, Refusenik (2022), Landscape with Sex and Violence (2017), and If I Should Say I Have Hope (2012), all with YesYes Books, and the co-editor of Please Excuse This Poem: 100 Poets for the Next Generation (Viking, 2015).

Her work has appeared in APR, LA Review of Books, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, A Public Space, and the anthology Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture.

She has received grants from the Cafe Royal Cultural Society and the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute. A former fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and previously on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, she currently teaches poetry at Columbia University, Princeton University, and the 92Y. Born in Indianapolis, she grew up in Los Angeles and currently lives in Brooklyn.

Published Works

I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton (University of Texas Press, 2022)
Refusenik (YesYes Books, 2022)
Landscape with Sex and Violence (YesYes Books, 2022)
Please Excuse This Poem: 100 Poets for the Next Generation (Viking, 2015)
If I Should Say I Have Hope (YesYes Books, 2012)

Author Site

Links to Sample Works

Video Reading

Current Title

Writer, Editor, and Professor

Education

Santa Monica Community College
University of California at Santa Cruz
Columbia University

Subject Matter

Genre