Melissa Ridley Elmes

Melissa Ridley Elmes is the author of two collections of speculative poetry, Dreamscapes and Dark Corners (Alien Buddha Press, 2023) and Arthurian Things; A Collection of Poems (Dark Myth Publications, 2020), nominated for the Elgin Award for best book of speculative poetry by the Science Fiction Poetry Writers Association. Her fiction and poetry appear in literary journals and popular magazines, including DarkWinter, Dreams and Nightmares, Star*Line, Eye to the Telescope, Spectral Realms, Illumen, Haven, Black Fox, Poetry South, and World of Myth, and her writing has been nominated for the Pushcart prize and the Rhysling and Dwarf Star awards for speculative poetry. A medieval scholar and associate professor of English and gender studies, she has authored articles on various subjects including the Arthurian and Robin Hood legends, Chaucer, women and gender in medieval literature, medievalism, and pedagogy, and she is the co-editor of an introduction to literature textbook (Lenses: Perspectives on Literature, Second Edition) and co-editor of Food and Feast in Premodern Outlaw Tales (Routledge, 2021) and Melusine's Footprint: Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth (Brill, 2017). She has held fellowships at the Folger Shakespeare Library and with the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts.