Melody Nixon

Melody Nixon (she/they) is a Kiwi-American writer, critic, and academic. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Columbia University, where she taught creative writing from 2019 – 2021, and continues to advise MFA students. They also hold an interdisciplinary PhD in literary criticism and critical race and ethnicity studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Melody co-founded Apogee Journal, a journal dedicated to supporting underrepresented voices in US publishing, in 2010. They also co-curated and hosted the First Person Plural Reading Series in Harlem, New York for three years, and served as the Interviews Editor of The Common for seven years.

You can read Melody’s essays, reviews, and criticism in The London Review of Books, Literary Hub, BOMB Magazine, Conjunctions, Electric Literature, Public Books, and Landfall, among others. Melody currently teaches at Massey University and Te Kura Toi Whakaari O Aotearoa in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa, where she lives with her partner and daughter.