About Melissa Scott Sinclair

Melissa Scott Sinclair is a novelist, essayist and award-winning journalist. She is the recipient of the 2023 Lit/South Award in Fiction and the 2021 Michael Kenneth Smith Novel Fellowship.

Melissa’s bylines have appeared in The Washington Post, Audubon, Richmond magazine, Style Weekly and The Virginian-Pilot. Her work has been recognized by the Virginia Press Association, the Virginia Outdoor Writers Association, and the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.

Her creative nonfiction has been published in Parhelion, the Streetlight Magazine 2021 Anthology and Nine Lives: A Life in 10 Minutes Anthology. Melissa’s short story “Everything Must Go” appeared in the 2011 anthology Richmond Macabre.

She is a longtime volunteer and former board member of the James River Writers, a nonprofit that inspires and connects the writing community in central Virginia.

Melissa grew up in a hilltop house in Baltimore. She now lives with her family in Richmond, Virginia, where she spends summers raising tree frogs.