Melody S. Gee

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), finalist for the Hudson Prize. She is also the author of three books of poetry, The Convert’s Heart is Good to Eat, runner-up for the 2022 Adrift Chapbook Prize; The Dead in Daylight, long listed for the 2016 Julie Suk Award; and Each Crumbling House, winner of the 2010 Perugia Press Prize. 

Melody is the recipient of Kundiman fellowships in poetry and fiction, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, Artist Support Grants from the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis, two Pushcart Prize nominations, a Best New Poets nomination, and the Robert Watson Literary Prize. Her poems, essays, and reviews appear 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 currently works as a communications strategist. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband and daughters.