Melissa Saunders

Melissa “Meezy” Saunders is a writer, performer, journeyman electrician-in-training, musician, and interdisciplinary artist. Saunders’ work has appeared in Another Classroom Courier Newspaper, Body Verses Anthology, Boston Latin School Argo, Boston T.I.P. (Teens In Print), DigBoston (formerly Boston’s Weekly Dig), The Harvard Crimson, Hi Five! Magazine, IMPOSE Magazine, In Parentheses Magazine, Mxmoir Misshapes, PUBLIC POOL, She Shreds Magazine, Teen Voices Magazine, and The WILD Magazine. Saunders has self-published work extensively in numerous zines and currently authors a zine titled “DORCHESTER.” While completing the 2007 Simon’s Rock Young Writers Workshop, Saunders’ work appeared in An Infinite Amount of Supplies for a Starving Nation, a student work anthology. She is the five-time consecutive winner of the Mary Grassa O’Neill Award for Outstanding Achievement in Writing. While at Boston Latin School she earned Magna cum laude Latin honors on the 2004 National Latin Exam. Saunders was a semi-finalist for the 2017 GrubStreet Emerging Writers Fellowship and a recipient of the 2018 Allston-Brighton Community Scholar Award. An advocate for community engagement and the arts, Saunders currently volunteers at the Dorchester Art Project (DAP), a community arts space operated by BRAIN Arts, a music and arts nonprofit. A proud native of Boston’s Dorchester-Roxbury neighborhoods, she is the recipient of the 2018-2019 City of Boston Scholarship Award. Saunders’ most recent piece, “21 Considerations of the Nabokovs’ Love Letters,” appeared in Open Letters #2, a Leeds, England-based publication. Saunders is currently based in Boston and studies at Harvard University.