Melanie Pappadis Faranello is an award-winning writer, teaching artist, creator of Poetry on the Streets. She is the author of the debut story collection, Everybody Needs Something, which received the 2025 Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence from Columbus State University and is forthcoming March 2026. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Swamp Pink, StoryQuarterly, Electric Literature, Hippocampus, Vol 1. Brooklyn, Permafrost, HuffPost Personal, Blackbird, Literary Mama, Catamaran and elsewhere, and been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize. Her novel-in-progress won an Emerging Writer Award from Key West Literary Seminars, shortlisted for the Dana Awards and William Faulkner’s Wisdom Competition. She holds her MFA from The New School. Originally from Chicago, she lives in West Hartford, CT. Find her online at https://www.melaniefaranello.com/