Melissa Melo interned for Dystel, Goderich & Bourret in Fall 2019 and joined the team in early 2021. This native-New Yorker graduated from Vassar College as a pre-medical student with B.A in Biology and minor in Creative Writing. After graduation, she decided to put her years of epigenetic research behind her and instead pursue book publishing. She interned at Wunderkind PR, volunteered for the Kweli International Literary Festival and Latinx Kidlit Book Festival, and found her way back to DG&B!

She is not taking on clients at this time, but in the future, would be interested in seeing children’s literature, particularly YA and middle grade fiction. She hopes to promote underrepresented voices and women in STEM through her love for romantic comedies, coming of age tales, and the supernatural. In the adult space, she is interested in women’s commercial fiction and narrative nonfiction: popular science, pop culture, and true crime.

Melissa says... 

In middle school, I was lucky enough to have an entire friend group obsessed with reading and writing. Some of my favorite memories from school bring me back to our 5th grade lunch table where we would trade our “writing notebooks” and read each other’s stories. My vampire story starred my best friends and all of our crushes were in love with us *of course.*

As I got older, storytelling remained my favorite creative outlet. Burning through 100+ books a year at one point, you could say that I really loved to read. My relationship with storytelling eventually had an influence on my college essay! In response to the one prompt that asked us to explore “a sacred place,” I wrote about my cinematic dreams. The endless amount of writing material a dream can provide amazes me!

During college, I found myself torn between my love for pre-medical Biology and English. A few months before graduation, I started to seriously look into book publishing and a felt a strong resurgence of love for books as I realized this could be my future. I am grateful to officially join the DG&B team and to work with all of their talented agents. I can’t wait to (eventually) connect with authors and to nurture their amazing books!