Melanie Conklin
Award-winning author of children’s middle-grade fiction, notably Counting Thyme, winner of the International Literacy Association Teachers’ Choices Award and the Nerdy Book Award.
Melanie Conklin grew up in North Carolina and worked as a product designer before she began her writing career. Her debut middle-grade novel, Counting Thyme, is a Nerdy Book Award winner, a Bank Street Best Children’s Book, winner of the International Literacy Association Teachers’ Choices Award, and a finalist for the Missouri Mark Twain Book Award, the Iowa Children’s Choice Award, the Illinois Bluestem Award, and the Arkansas Charlie May Simon Award. She is also the author of Every Missing Piece (Nebraska Golden Sower Award Nominee), A Perfect Mistake (Utah CLAU Beehive Book Award Nominee), Crushed (2024), and her debut picture book, When You Have to Wait (2024). Her work has been translated into German, Dutch, Farsi, and Romanian.
Melanie speaks at national literacy events regularly, including the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Convention, the American Library Association Midwinter Conference, BookExpo America (BEA), and the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. She has been a mentor for aspiring writers for six years and her mentees have gone on to sign with agents and publish over a dozen novels at Big Five publishers.
In 2020, when the world was in pandemic lockdown, Melanie co-directed the Everywhere Book Festival, a virtual gathering of kidlit authors, illustrators, and books reaching more than 43,000 unique viewers from around the world. In addition to directing online sales to 60 independent bookstores that were affected by the coronavirus crisis, the festival also partnered with We Need Diverse Books to distribute books to schools, libraries and literacy programs in need across the U.S.A. For her work on the festival, Melanie was one of 40 publishing professionals named as honorees for the Publishers Weekly Star Watch 2020.
When she’s not writing, Melanie spends her time doodling and dreaming up new ways to be creative. She lives in Massachusetts with her family.
If you’re writing for children, you will find Melanie an experienced and motivating mentor. She also coaches story structure, mindset, and workflow for all genres.
Melanie’s Genres
- Young Adult
- Women's Fiction
- Middle Grade
Counting Thyme
When 11-year-old Thyme Owens’s little brother, Val, is accepted into a new cancer drug trial, it’s just the second chance that he needs. But it also means the Owens family has to move to New York, thousands of miles away from Thyme’s best friend and everything she knows and loves. The island of Manhattan doesn’t exactly inspire new beginnings, but Thyme tries to embrace the change for what it is: temporary.
After Val’s treatment shows real promise and Mr. Owens accepts a full-time position in the city, Thyme has to face the frightening possibility that the move to New York is permanent. Thyme loves her brother, and knows the trial could save his life—she’d give anything for him to be well—but she still wants to go home, although the guilt of not wanting to stay is agonizing. She finds herself even more mixed up when her heart feels the tug of new friends, a first crush, and even a crotchety neighbor and his sweet whistling bird. All Thyme can do is count the minutes, the hours, and the days, and hope time can bring both a miracle for Val and a way back home.
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Every Missing Piece
Maddy Gaines sees danger everywhere she looks: at the bus stop, around the roller rink, in the woods, and (especially) by the ocean. When Maddy meets a mysterious boy setting booby traps in the North Carolina woods, she suspects the worst.
Maddy is certain she’s found Billy Holcomb—the boy who went missing in the fall. Except, maybe it’s not him. It’s been six months since he disappeared. And who will believe her anyway? Definitely not her mom or her stepdad... Or the chief of police.
As Maddy tries to uncover the truth about Billy Holcomb, ghosts from her own past surface, her best friend starts to slip away, and Maddy’s world tilts once again. Can she put the pieces of her life back together, even if some of them are lost forever?
A Perfect Mistake
Max wishes he could go back in time: to before he was diagnosed with ADHD, before he grew to be the tallest kid in his class, and before he and his best friends went into the woods in the middle of the night. Max doesn’t remember what happened after he left his friends Will and Joey and the older kids who took them there. He’s not sure if he wants to remember. Knowing isn’t going to make Joey talk to him again or bring Will out of his coma.
When the local authorities run out of leads, Max realizes that without his help, they may never know what really happened to Will. Charged by the idea that he may be the key to uncovering the truth, Max pairs up with classmate and aspiring journalist Sam to investigate what really happened that night. But not everyone in the community wants that night to be remembered.
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