Melanie Thorne is the author of the semi-autobiographical novel Hand Me Down (Dutton/Plume), which was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2012 and a 2013 ALA Alex Award nominee. She earned her MA in Creative Writing from the University of CA, Davis, and has been awarded the Alva Englund Fellowship, the Maurice Prize in Fiction, and a residency at the Hedgebrook Writers’ Retreat. She was a 2014 Virginia Quarterly Review Nonfiction Scholar and a 2014 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices mentor. She lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches at the UCLA Extension Writer’s Program. She attended the Community of Writers in 2008. www.melaniethorne.com