About Melissa

Melissa Huff returned to her love of writing after fifteen satisfying years immersed in making one-of-a-kind jewelry. When she needed to use more of her intuition and craved a less linear creative process, sculpting poems by folding words around images and ideas turned out to be just the thing.

She explores both free verse and metered poetry, enjoying the structure as well as the patterns of sound and rhythm inherent in both. Melissa feeds her poetry from the power and mystery of the natural world and the ways in which body, nature and spirit intertwine.

Her poem, Talking with Trees, garnered a 2024 Pushcart Prize nomination, while many of her other works have earned recognition in local and national contests. An advocate of the power of poetry presented out loud, Melissa twice won awards in the BlackBerry Peach Prizes for Poetry: Spoken and Heard, sponsored by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (NFSPS). She has read her work at literary festivals and private parties, in bookstores, art galleries and classrooms,  in coffee shops, pubs, museums and libraries, on Zoom and in the rotunda of New Mexico’s State Capitol building.

Melissa’s poetry has appeared in many journals, including Blue Heron Review, Gyroscope Review, RockPaperPoem, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Persimmon Tree, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art and Healing, and Amethyst Review. Several anthologies and other collections also include her work, such as The Best of Halfway Down the Stairs, 2015-2019, Encore: Prize Poems 2022 (NFSPS), Northern Colorado Writers’ Chiarascuro: Anthology of Virtue & Vice and Thin Places & Sacred Spaces from Amethyst Press.

Melissa has been active with her workshop group, Plumb Line Poets, and enjoys membership in Poets & Patrons of Chicago, the Illinois State Poetry Society, NFSPS, Columbine Poets of Colorado, and Lighthouse Writers in Denver. Having grown up in New Jersey and California, she now splits her time between Illinois and Colorado.