Oklahoma Mystery Writer

Melonie B. Hylan

Melonie B. Hylan, who writes from her home in Norman, Oklahoma, is a retired professor of English and author of a new amateur detective series that draws on her Oklahoma background. Melonie grew up in Oklahoma and received her BA, MA, and PhD in English from the University of Oklahoma. She has taught at the University of New Orleans, Northern Michigan University, and the University of Oklahoma where her classes included film, world drama, and literature. Although her career focused on writing grants and academic prose, she always enjoyed writing, penning a five-act mystery when she was in the fifth grade, and writing poetry on her lunch hour. Ashes, Ashes. . ., her first novel, introduces a sixty-eight-year-old retiree, turned sleuth after a murder in her boarding house. The same amateur detective returns in her second novel, Pitchforks and Pocketknives, to investigate an unsolved, small-town mystery from 1964.   When Melonie is not writing, studying Spanish, trying out vegetarian recipes, or gardening, she teaches yoga and looks for opportunities to speak out as an uppity woman.