A native of east Tennessee, poet and novelist Melanie K. Hutsell has been learning to live with bipolar disorder for more than fifteen years. She holds a BA in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an MA in English from Indiana University at Bloomington, and an MBA from East Tennessee State University. She is the author of the novels, The Dead Shall Rise: A Tale of the Mountains, and The Book of Susan, which received the Award of Merit in the fiction category of the 2023 Christianity Today Book Awards. A lay member of the United Methodist Church, an avid reader, and music lover, she currently resides in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.