melanie writes

Melanie Cole writes raw stories, personal essays, and investigative pieces addressing social issues including mental illness, race, police violence, social stigma, and medical malpractice.

Melanie holds a degree in International Relations from Richmond, The American International University in London. She served in an eight-year career as a disaster field responder and emergency manager in cities like New Orleans, Louisiana, and Seattle, Washington. She has been a private writer her whole life, but was encouraged by a colleague to send in a pitch to Tacoma’s Grit City Magazine for a story idea.

Melanie has been published in Grit City Magazine, Dandelion Revolution Press, on The Mighty, in the Tacoma News Tribune, and in Black Coffee Poetry, among others. Her poem, “God Bless The Bottom Feeders,” earned an honorable mention in the “Things I Wrote Down” poetry contest.

She has published three poetry chapbooks— Ocean Songs, Selkies, and God Bless the Bottom Feeders, which debuted in 2025. She is working on her fourth chapbook for a release in the late summer of 2025.

Melanie also runs an online literary journal, The Faoileánach Journal, with its second issue due out in September 2025.