Melissa Scholes Young was born and raised in Hannibal, Missouri. She is the author of the novels Flood (2017) and The Hive (2021), and the chapbooks Guinea Pig and Scrap Metal Baby. She’s a Contributing Editor for Fiction Writers Review and Editor of two volumes of D.C. Women Writers: Grace in Darkness (2018) and Furious Gravity (2020). Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Washington Post, Ploughshares, Narrative,
“In contemporary life, sports are a lot like politics or religion in that they activate these very deep-seated affinities, which we re-enact continuously, and often without examination.” Melissa Scholes Young talks with Katherine Hill about her new novel, A Short Move.
“The tension between whether a story wants to be long or short requires us to examine them together.” Melissa Scholes Young thinks about form and story containers by engaging with the work of R.L. Maizes.
“I’m not the kind of historical writer who takes an event or a thing and tries to factually inhabit it. But I love to take the germ of something and pull it in a weird direction.” Melissa Scholes Young talks with Clare Beams about The Illness Lesson.
“Every character gets understanding. That’s what a writer does. But abusive humans only get two pages. That’s it.” Jami Attenberg talks with Melissa Scholes Young about her new novel, family secrets, the desire for happiness, and more.
Melissa Scholes Young talks with Melissa Rivero about her debut novel, The Affairs of the Falcóns, as well as making time to write, the immigrant narrative, and writing as a political act.
The form of motherhood is beautifully banal: Melissa Scholes Young on the interplay between form and meaning in Lydia Kiesling’s debut novel.
Melissa Scholes Young talks with fellow Bread Loaf Bakeless Camargo Residency Fellows Crystal Hana Kim and Ingrid Rojas Contreras about their debut novels, craft, research, and more.
“Alam’s novel asks readers to examine the relationship between how we construct and project ‘motherhood’ as an identity with notions of the limitations and constrictions of this identity.”
“I’m honored to be a lifelong Midwesterner and to write and think about place with central allegiance”: Melissa Scholes Young talks with Melissa Fraterrigo about her story collection, Glory Days.
In her debut collection, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, Danielle Evans’s characters, like most of us, struggle to belong. Their loyalties to place, to family, and to self are often divided. Melissa Scholes Young interviews the author to find out how the identities we claim or deny often define the people we become.
