Melanie Rae Thon (last name pronounced “tone”) is an American Writer. She is a recipient of a Fellowship in Creative Arts from The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, a Whiting Writer’s Award, the Hopwood Award, two Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Reading the West Book Award, the Gina Berriault Award, and a Writer’s Residency from the Lannan Foundation. In 2009, she was Virgil C. Aldrich Fellow at the Tanner Humanities Center. Thon’s most recent books and chapbooks are The Bodies of Birds (2019); Lover (2019); and The Good Samaritan Speaks (2015). She is also the author of the novels The Voice of the River (2011); Sweet Hearts (2001); and others.
Melanie Rae Thon
AUDIO
Melanie Rae Thon Reads “In the Exclusion Zone”
Memory of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, thirty years ago, is still resonant—but its aftermath in the Ukrainian countryside continues to shape the physical earth. Listen to author Melanie Rae Thon Continue reading
Feature
In the Exclusion Zone
Before it was a nuclear disaster, Chernobyl was a land of wild grape and lilac, owl, polecat, and bees. Continue reading