Melissa Llanes Brownlee

Melissa Llanes Brownlee is a native Hawaiian writer who lives in Japan and holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her short fiction has appeared in many literary magazines, including Wigleaf, Craft, Pithead Chapel, and The Threepenny Review. Her debut collection, Bitter Over Sweet, won the 2023 Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards and was published in 2025 by SFWP, following earlier books Kahi and Lua and Hard Skin.