Melanie Pryor is a literary nonfiction writer living and working on Kaurna land. Her short memoir has been published in Meanjin, Southerly, and Lip, and her fiction on wine bottles as part of the Overland/Short Story Prize in 2015. In 2017 she received the inaugural highly commended award in the AAWP Chapter One Prize, where her travel memoir was described by the judge as ‘fearless, imaginative, “transformative” and unusual. This is a familiar world—but not one that is seen in a familiar way’.
Melanie holds a PhD in creative writing, and writes about the relationship between place and the body, wild landscapes, and women’s stories of being in them. Throughout 2018-2019 Melanie spent time in the US as a writer-in-residence at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods in California and at the Vermont Studio Centre in Vermont, and was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights in Boston, Massachusetts before joining Writers SA as Membership and Administration Coordinator in early 2020.
Melanie co-founded The Hearth, a series of literary readings nights in Adelaide, and has volunteered for community arts programs. She is deeply committed as a staff member of Writers SA, where she promotes, supports, and connects writing communities in South Australia.
