Melissa Cistaro

Melissa Cistaro’s stories have appeared in The New Ohio Review, Brevity, The Huffington Post, PBS: To the Contrary, Good Housekeeping and the anthologies Cherished, and Love and Profanity. Her award-winning memoir Pieces of My Mother (U.S. edition) was acquired by HarperCollins Canada in 2019. The Canadian edition, Without My Mother, went on to become a Globe & Mail bestseller.

Melissa has taught on faculty at the San Miguel Writers Conference, the San Francisco Writers Conference, Word Wave Literary Festival in Tahoe, and Writing Pad. She also worked for many years as a bookseller and an event coordinator at Book Passage in Northern California where she introduced hundreds of authors.

Melissa currently resides in Victoria with her family—and lots of books.