Melissa Faliveno is the author of the novel Hemlock, (Little, Brown, 2026), and the essay collection Tomboyland, named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, New York Public Library, Oprah Magazine, and Electric Literature, and recipient of a 2021 Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement from the Wisconsin Library Association. Her writing has appeared in Esquire, the Paris Review, the Kenyon Review, Literary Hub, Ms. Magazine, Brevity, and Brooklyn Rail, among others, and in the anthologies Sex and the Single Woman (Harper Perennial, 2022) and Hit Repeat Until I Hate Music (Split/Lip, 2026). Born and raised in small-town Wisconsin, she teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina and lives in the woods outside Chapel Hill.
