Melissa Falcon Field earned her MFA in Fiction Writing from Texas State University. She has been a recipient of the Katherine Anne Porter Writer- in- Residence appointment and attended the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. For nearly a decade, she worked with Teach for America and AmeriCorps, in New York, Boston and San Francisco, as an inner city schoolteacher and helped pioneer the YEAR UP writing curriculum used nationally. She has taught Creative Writing at small colleges across the country, and currently works as an instructor at The Madison Writers’ Studio. Her writing has appeared in literary magazines and journals, including: Hip Momma: The Parenting Zine, Kaliope Literary Journal, The Portland Phoenix, Across Curriculums, The Austin American Statesmen, The Ballantine Books Reader’s Circle, The Hartford Courant and The Maine Scholar. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin with her young son, her husband and three chickens. What Burns Away is her debut novel.