Melanie Tafejian is a writer and educator from the Pacific Northwest. She won the 2021 Atlanta Review International Poetry Prize, was a finalist for the 2023 Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2023 Southern Humanities Review Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Atlanta Review, The Georgia Review, Nimrod, Poetry Northwest, The Los Angeles Review, and Willow Springs, among other journals. Melanie is a poetry reader for The Raleigh Review. She received an MFA from North Carolina State University, where she now lectures in the First Year Writing Program.