Lynn Melnick
Writer, Editor, and Professor
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)
Links to Sample Works
- American Poetry Review, “Refusenik”
- Poetry Foundation, poems & podcasts
- The New Yorker, “Landscape with Loanword and Solstice”
