ABOUT

Melissa Bobe is a fiction writer living in New York. She is the author of ELECTRIC TREES, NASCENT WITCH, and SIBYLS, and she has new fiction on the way! Melissa likes to bounce from genre to genre, never content to stay in one place for very long, but she usually finds herself somewhere under that big speculative umbrella.

When she’s not writing, Melissa works as a librarian. The job is a good fit, but it took some time to get there. Before library school, Melissa taught college English as she earned a PhD in literature. Before the PhD, she collected a few other degrees in literature and writing, also while tutoring and teaching. And before those degrees, she worked shelving books and leading programs for kids in a public library. Now that everything’s come full circle, she intends never to go back to school or change careers again! (At least not for the next few years.)

Melissa is proud to come from a family of teachers. Although she is no longer in the college classroom, she uses her teaching skills to run programs at the libraries she works in. Melissa firmly believes that, like writers, teachers are among the great communicators of the world. Her husband Danny is on his way to becoming an elementary school teacher. Melissa’s mother, a dancer and a bilingual special education teacher, also worked with elementary school students throughout her career. Melissa’s father, a professional musician, taught junior high school band for so many years that Melissa has gotten used to randomly running into his former students, all of whom tell her what a difference her dad made in their lives. Most of Melissa’s friends are in education, as well, whether as librarians leading storytimes for little ones or as professors teaching literature to college students.

Melissa and Danny have four rescue cats: Mina, a polydactyl tabby with a penchant for getting stuck in bizarre places; Aoife, a torbie whose meow is so loud, you’ve probably heard it yourself; Anya, an affectionate snowshoe kitten who gets along with everyone; and Buddy, a big drooly tabby whose greatest joy in life is to tear open a bag of trash, eat his way through it, and make a bed out of the shredded remains. The spirit of Melissa’s beloved first cat, Inéz, watches over them and incites the other four felines to appropriate mischief.

Also in their home are Danny’s chess boards and sprawling manga collection, Melissa’s ballet barre, their favorite art supplies, several specialty kitchen appliances, a coffee nook, and their ever-growing combined library, which might need its own separate facility soon.

Melissa feels a strong affinity with her namesake, the honeybee, and hopes to have hives of her own someday. In the meantime, bees are her favorite nonfiction topic to read about and they often make appearances in her fiction. Despite having had more than her fair share of schooling, she takes beekeeping classes whenever she has the chance.