Melissa Ginsburg

Melissa Ginsburg is the author of the novels The House Uptown and Sunset City, the poetry collections Doll Apollo (winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Award) and Dear Weather Ghost, and three poetry chapbooks, Arbor, Double Blind, and Apollo. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Image, Guernica, Kenyon Review, Fence, Southwest Review, and other magazines. Originally from Houston, Texas, Melissa studied poetry at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Mississippi, and serves as Associate Editor of Tupelo Quarterly. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi.

Artist Statement

I am the author of two novels and two poetry collections. My work is rooted in feminist concerns, and deals with survivors of violence and trauma. Grounded in place, image, and the sonic possibilities of language, my fiction borrows techniques and structures from poetry and noir to create complex psychological portraits of women and their relationships. My characters often find themselves inadvertently harming those they love as they struggle for various types of hard-won freedoms. In my latest novel, set in New Orleans, Lane is a single mother and a brilliant painter who prioritizes art over traditional female caretaking responsibilities--she is neglectful of her daughter, who dies unexpectedly, just as Lane begins to suspect her cognition is slipping. The book explores the meanings and ramifications of Lane's choices, her artistic vision, and the relationships she has sacrificed to pursue her career. This work was inspired by my mother, who suffers from dementia, and her matriarchal lineage—a line of complicated, ambitious, self-sabotaging women who have lived in New Orleans for generations, despite the many dangers and losses they have suffered in that lovable, complicated city.