Melissa Hintz, a Shaker Heights resident, escaped from corporate America to become a writer, her left brain exhausted from years as a number-crunching actuary and her right brain impatient to let her imagination run wild again. Her first book, On Chagrin Boulevard; A Collection of Fluff, Fables, Fabrications, Flapdoodle, Free Verse and Flash Fiction, includes flash fiction and poetry that explore universal themes of love, desire, loss, and joy. She is currently doing a final edit on her third novel. All three of her novels have been semi-finalists in the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing contest. Although all three are currently unpublished, she is tenacious and vows to see them in print.

She loves the complexity inherent in the creation of characters and plot twists for her novels, as well as the challenge of poetry, which requires condensing a story, idea, or emotion into just a few words. Both indulge her fascination with the nuances of sounds, magic of words, and joy of unexpected discovery.

When not writing, she loves travel, nature, good conversation, good books, music, and exploring bookstores, restaurants, museums, theaters, and parks. She treasures her friends and family and her four writing groups.

Melissa treasures the rich literary environment provided by Cleveland’s many libraries, book stores, fervent readers and talented writers, and Heights Arts.