MELISSA WAN
I'm a writer of fiction living between Manchester and Leeds in the north of England.
I was born in 1991 to a Chinese mother and Dutch father and grew up in Lelystad, Holland, before moving to the UK aged eight. In 2012 I graduated with degree in the Social Sciences from the University of Manchester, and in 2018 I was awarded the inaugural Crowdfunded BAME Writers' Scholarship to study Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.
Since 2017 my short fiction has been published by a number of independent presses, including by Bluemoose Books, Nightjar Press, Dead Ink Books and Cōnfingō Publishing. In 2019, I was an Elizabeth Kostova Foundation Writing Fellow, and I was 2019's Northern Word Factory Apprentice, mentored by Carys Davies and supported by New Writing North.
I'm currently in my first year of a practice-based PhD at the University of Leeds, supported by the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities. My research looks at disability, textual silence and the (not) writing of sex in contemporary literature. Alongside the academic part of my thesis I will complete a cycle of new stories.
Contact: melissa.brakel at gmail.com
I was born in 1991 to a Chinese mother and Dutch father and grew up in Lelystad, Holland, before moving to the UK aged eight. In 2012 I graduated with degree in the Social Sciences from the University of Manchester, and in 2018 I was awarded the inaugural Crowdfunded BAME Writers' Scholarship to study Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.
Since 2017 my short fiction has been published by a number of independent presses, including by Bluemoose Books, Nightjar Press, Dead Ink Books and Cōnfingō Publishing. In 2019, I was an Elizabeth Kostova Foundation Writing Fellow, and I was 2019's Northern Word Factory Apprentice, mentored by Carys Davies and supported by New Writing North.
I'm currently in my first year of a practice-based PhD at the University of Leeds, supported by the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities. My research looks at disability, textual silence and the (not) writing of sex in contemporary literature. Alongside the academic part of my thesis I will complete a cycle of new stories.
Contact: melissa.brakel at gmail.com