Twenty-five years ago, Melanie left Ottakar’s bookshop in Salisbury for a life of adventure. She volunteered for a year with refugees in Albania, before moving to Indonesia and working as a copywriter, photographer, and magazine editor – work which took her into the heart of Borneo and over the jungles of Sumatra. It’s no surprise then, that she loves world literature, and books about language, travel, and outsiders.

She now lives in Spain and is up to her elbows in a globe-crossing middle-grade manuscript called The Nighthawk Detectives, which won the Bath Children’s Novel Award 2025.