She is a Nebraska Center for Writers author with work published in journals including The Midwest Quarterly, Chum, The Toronto Quarterly, Plains Song Review, as well as Looking Past (Goldfish Press), and Times of Sorrow, Times of Grace (Blackwaters Press). Her first break occurred when she received the honor for best work from the Poet Laureate of Nebraska, William Kloefkorn. She holds baccalaureate degrees from the University of Nebraska in both English and Biology, and a Ph.D. in Pharmacy from Creighton University, a private, Jesuit college in Nebraska. Melissa’s forthcoming chapbook It Wasn’t Like In the Movies is a work dedicated to her late niece, Dakota Cierra Christina Moler, who lost her life at the young age of 14 to drowning while heroically trying to save the life of another child.