
about melissa
"A master storyteller. Melissa Castleman makes it look so easy and effortless.
I’m instantly immersed in the world of her characters and can’t wait to turn the page.”
Devi Laskar, Circa andThe Atlas of Reds and Blues

“Her writing is fresh and lovely.”
Susan Elderkin, The Novel Cure
Melissa Castleman has written novels, magazine and newspaper features, and restaurant and theater reviews. She recently finished a dystopian novel about a girl surgeon.
She has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University and worked in a Michelin-starred restaurant in France while going to professional cooking school. Studying literature at Harvard was easier than deboning a rabbit while being timed and judged.
When not writing, Melissa likes cooking vats of bolognese sauce and hiking with her professor husband and son and their big, happy dog. She feels lucky every day to live alongside 400 undergraduate students as the Associate Head at Benjamin Franklin College, a residential college at Yale University in Connecticut.