Melanie S. Hatter is an award-winning author of two novels and one short story collection. Selected by Edwidge Danticat, Malawi’s Sisters won the inaugural Kimbilio National Fiction Prize, published by Four Way Books in 2019. The Color of My Soul won the 2011 Washington Writers’ Publishing House Fiction Prize, and Let No One Weep for Me, Stories of Love and Loss was released in 2015. She is a 2019 recipient of an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council. Melanie also is a participating author with the PEN/Faulkner Writers in Schools program, and serves on the board of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation.