Melissa Sites is a writer, living in Greenbelt since 1997.  Melissa came to Maryland from West Virginia, where she first studied poetry and fiction writing in high school, through Hollins University (Roanoke, VA) where she earned a BA with honors in English, with an unofficial concentration in Creative Writing, studying under such writers as Eric Trethewey (father of the poet laureate, who also studied at Hollins), Jeanne Larsen, RHW Dillard (ex of Annie Dillard, who wrote Pilgrim at Tinker Creek at Hollins), Cathy Hankla, and others. Melissa is an Anglophile and spent a semester in London with Hollins Abroad.<

Melissa came to the University of Maryland on fellowship to earn an MFA in Poetry, working with Stan Plumley, Michael Collier, and others.  She went on to complete a graduate certificate in Women’s Studies and a PhD in English Literature (British Romanticism), with the dissertation “Mary Shelley and Utopian Domesticity.” Melissa worked with Neil Fraistat for several years as a graduate assistant on the pioneering humanities website, Romantic Circles, and on the Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Johns Hopkins UP).

Melissa now writes poetry and fiction, and can be read in the Greenbelt News Review covering primarily Arts and Culture.  Melissa is an experienced professional copyeditor, and has run the grassroots arts non-profit, College Park Arts Exchange, since 2005.

Contact Melissa with your idea for a writing project.  Melissa has sat through untold hours of writing workshops, and knows how to give productive, helpful constructive criticism.  Melissa has taught Creative Writing at the college level, and can lead you into the mind-expanding labyrinth of fashioning your thoughts and observations into poetry and narrative.