Melissa Cate has always been a storyteller—her mom would record the bedtime stories Melissa would tell at night and type them up for her. After thirty years of mostly academic, devotional, or biographical writing, she jumped headfirst back into fiction in October 2023 and was a Write on the River winner in the spring of 2024. She has finished two women's fiction novels that she is starting to query. Melissa currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with her family but is a Midwesterner through and through.

Melissa’s short story “Welcome Home” appears in Recipes for Romance: A Sweet Valentine’s Day Anthology, to be published in January 2025. Follow Melissa on Instagram @melissacatewrites.