Melody S. Gee

Melody S. Gee is the author of We Carry Smoke and Paper: Essays on the Grief and Hope of Conversion (University of Iowa Press, October 2024). She is also the author of three books of poetry: The Convert’s Heart is Good to Eat (Driftwood Press, 2022), The Dead in Daylight (Cooper Dillion Books, 2016), and Each Crumbling House (Perugia Press, 2010).

Melody is the recipient of Kundiman fellowships in poetry and fiction, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, and Artist Support Grants from the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared recently in Soapberry Review, Commonweal, Essay Daily, and Lantern Review.

Born in Taiwan and raised in Cerritos, California, Melody is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and the University of New Mexico. She has taught writing at Purdue University, Southwestern Illinois College, and St. Louis Community College, and she currently works as a communications strategist. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband and daughters.