Melanie Sumner was born December 30, 1963, in Middletown, Ohio. She moved to Rome in 1970 and graduated from Darlington School in 1982. She received a BA in religious studies from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (where she studied with the late author Max Steele) in 1986 and an MFA in creative writing from Boston University in 1987. From 1988-90 she was a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal, West Africa, and she also has lived in Alaska, New Mexico and Provincetown. She has taught at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington, NC (1990-93), UNC-Chapel Hill (1995-96, writer-in-residence), University of New Mexico (1998-2001) and Shorter College (2002-08). She currently teaches creative writing at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia.
Her first book, Polite Society, a collection of West African short stories, was published in 1995 and won a Whiting Award, a regional award from Granta, and the Maria Thomas Award for the best book written by a Peace Corps volunteer. Her second book, the coming-of-age novel The School of Beauty and Charm, appeared in 2002. She was named Artist of the Year by the Rome Area Arts Council that same year. Her third book, The Ghost of Milagro Creek, a novel narrated by a Jicarilla Apache curandera in northern New Mexico, will be published by Algonquin in 2010.
She has had fiction and nonfiction published in many anthologies and journals including New Stories from the South: The Year's Best (in 1996, 2000 and 2004); After O'Connor: Stories from Contemporary Georgia (2003); The New Yorker; Atlanta Magazine; Five Points; Harper's; Ladies Home Journal; and Kennesaw Review.
Of her writing, she says, "I've always wanted to be a writer. I made my first attempts at book-writing when I was six, when I wrote 'books' about an orphan girl as well as some pieces about Bugs Bunny and bound them in painted pieces of cardboard. At Darlington, I turned my required weekly 500-word essay into my first attempts at creative nonfiction. One of these essays, a sardonic take on my Southern Baptist youth group called, "Why I Love Jesus," granted me admission to UNC, and prompted the admissions department to require essays of all applicants. I think this piece is still being published in a little book on how to write college admission essays called Essays That Worked. ... I've traveled quite a bit, and I've done this in part to become the writer I want to be. Living in another culture fosters an intense awareness that I find essential to the creative process."
Her first book, Polite Society, a collection of West African short stories, was published in 1995 and won a Whiting Award, a regional award from Granta, and the Maria Thomas Award for the best book written by a Peace Corps volunteer. Her second book, the coming-of-age novel The School of Beauty and Charm, appeared in 2002. She was named Artist of the Year by the Rome Area Arts Council that same year. Her third book, The Ghost of Milagro Creek, a novel narrated by a Jicarilla Apache curandera in northern New Mexico, will be published by Algonquin in 2010.
She has had fiction and nonfiction published in many anthologies and journals including New Stories from the South: The Year's Best (in 1996, 2000 and 2004); After O'Connor: Stories from Contemporary Georgia (2003); The New Yorker; Atlanta Magazine; Five Points; Harper's; Ladies Home Journal; and Kennesaw Review.
Of her writing, she says, "I've always wanted to be a writer. I made my first attempts at book-writing when I was six, when I wrote 'books' about an orphan girl as well as some pieces about Bugs Bunny and bound them in painted pieces of cardboard. At Darlington, I turned my required weekly 500-word essay into my first attempts at creative nonfiction. One of these essays, a sardonic take on my Southern Baptist youth group called, "Why I Love Jesus," granted me admission to UNC, and prompted the admissions department to require essays of all applicants. I think this piece is still being published in a little book on how to write college admission essays called Essays That Worked. ... I've traveled quite a bit, and I've done this in part to become the writer I want to be. Living in another culture fosters an intense awareness that I find essential to the creative process."
