Melissa Jørgenrud Helton is Literary Arts Director of Hindman Settlement School, a cultural nonprofit in Knott County, Kentucky. Her work has been published in Shenandoah, Women Speak, Still: The Journal, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Norwegian Writers Climate Campaign, and more. Her chapbooks include Inertia: A Study (Finishing Line Press), and Hewn (Workhorse), and her first full length collection is A Middle-Aged Woman Rages (Accents Publishing). She is editor of the anthology Troublesome Rising: A Thousand-Year Flood in Eastern Kentucky (University Press of KY) and Untelling, the literary and arts magazine of Hindman Settlement School. Her work has been supported through the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and has been awarded the George Scarbrough Poetry Prize, the Emma Bell Miles Nonfiction Prize, has been nominated for Best of the Net, and once won her a piece of key lime pie. She has been honored with the Mildred Haun Award of Excellence and designation as a Kentucky Colonel, and she is a dual citizen in the United Kingdom.
