I grew up in Batesville, Mississippi before moving to Alabama to attend Indian Springs School, a co-ed college prep boarding school just south of Birmingham.
I worked my way through school, attending Bennington College and Southern Vermont College before receiving my B.A. in Writing & Literature from Vermont College. My first book, Nocturnal Narratives, was self-published in May of 2009.
A collection of essays, Baking Cookies with Sylvia Plath, is forthcoming.
I believe there is no experience from which a writer cannot glean priceless knowledge. At a glance, my résumé looks as mottled as a bunch of stray cats. In a ritzy salon in Atlanta, I listened to the secrets women tell their hairdresser — information, they confessed, they'd never share with their therapists. I befriended and earned the respect of rough-handed, muscle-bound men with whom I loaded and unloaded trucks at the UPS hub. As a baker, I learned the quiet secrets of rising before the city to conjure renowned buttermilk biscuits. I developed and implemented a literacy-based after school program in an inner-city school, and the love of those children ripped through me. In Vermont, as a woodworker's apprentice, I came to appreciate the silky results of a process that I call "Zen and the art of sanding.” I taught circus arts to children at a private school and was filled with buoyancy. As a nursing assistant, I held the hands of the dying. In Vermont and Mississippi, I worked at two of the top independent bookstores in the country as a bookseller/marketing assistant/writer and editor. The list goes on... dishwasher, waitress, security guard, head shop employee extraordinaire, etc. Most recently, I was the manager of a library in Mississippi, where one of my many responsibilities was to develop and implement educational programming for children, teens, and adults.
In one way or another, I have worked with or taught people from every background imaginable, varying in age from 2 to 102. The experiences I’ve had, the people I’ve met, the stories I’ve collected, are all incredible — inspiring my writing and fueling my passion as an educator.
| Holler at me! | melba@melbamajor.com | 205.908.9714 | 2312 Highland Ave S #2 Birmingham, AL 35205 |