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Melanie Faith, Development Editor & Acquisitions |
Melanie Faith is a night-owl writer and editor who likes to wear many hats, including as a poet, photographer and visual artist, prose writer, professor, and tutor. She enjoys writing craft books for authors, ASMR videos, reading, and tiny houses. She’s been a doodler for years but just recently got brave enough to share her perfectly imperfect drawings.
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Alexis Paige, Development Editor & Acquisitions |
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Just like Melanie, Alexis scored her role at Vine Leaves Press by first becoming an author here. Her memoir in vignettes, Not a Place on Any Map, was the winner of the 2016 Vine Leaves Press Vignette Collection Award. Her second book, Work Hard, Not Smart: How to Make a Messy Literary Life, also from Vine Leaves Press, is a memoir of writing craft and neurodivergent creativity. Alexis began editing for Vine Leaves in 2017, doing dozens of copy and development edits on manuscripts of all genres. This editing work, plus her ongoing nonfiction writing, led to her current role as Creative Nonfiction Acquisitions Editor. While she continues to do development editing, Alexis also helps to shape and grow the Press’s catalog of nonfiction writers.
Her essays appear widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Longform, The Rumpus, Hippocampus, Fourth Genre, The Pinch, and on Brevity, where she was an Assistant Editor from 2013-2019. Winner of the New Millennium Nonfiction Prize, Alexis has also received “Notable” mentions in Best American Essays and multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Assistant Professor of English at Vermont Technical College, she holds an MA in poetry and an MFA in nonfiction. Alexis lives in Vermont with her husband and a rotating cast of rescue animals. |
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Alana King, Copyeditor & Proofreader & Acquisitions |
As well as being a copyeditor and proofreader for the press, Alana is responsible for compiling and creating our monthly round-up newsletters. After earning a B.A. in English from Texas State University and an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the University of Memphis, Alana King is currently working on a Ph.D. in Literature at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her research interests include American Literature and History, the literature and history of marginalized and non-mainstream populations, film studies and history, and war and genocide studies.Outside of school, she also proofreads and edits blog posts, articles, and manuscripts and also serves in readership or editorial positions for lit journals and publications.
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Melissa Slayton, Development Editor & Acquisitions |
As well as being a development editor for the press, she also has a hand in choosing which books will get published. She is one of the people behind the scenes who the publisher passes full manuscripts to when they need to be considered for publication. If Melissa says it's a firm yes, then the chances are, you're in!
Melissa has a B.A. in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, N.C. Her work can be found in the Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, San Pedro River Review, Best of Vine Leaves Literary Journal 2015, Pinesong, the South Carolina Yearbook, Apalachee Review, Comstock Review, Lyric Magazine, The Poet’s Word, and TINGE. She currently plays keyboard for Kael Jackson. |
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Peter Snell, Acquisitions |
Peter Snell is solely responsible for acquiring books at VLP as he's not just your average slush pile reader. He was a bookseller at Barton's Bookshop in Leatherhead, UK, for 20 years and has been an avid reader from the age of three or four. He definitely knows a potential good book when a manuscript reaches his hands. He has a BEd Hons degree in history and is a qualified teacher with an earlier background with IBM where he became familiar with PL1, Fortran 4 and 80 column cards. It has been his mission in recent years to champion new writers, traditionally published or otherwise, and discover new talents and those not yet fully recognised. To this end he has surrendered most of his autonomy when choosing the books he reads and subsists on a diet of author submissions and publishers' proofs and pre-pubs.
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Meg Johnson, Acquisitions |
Meg Johnson is the author of the books Without: Body, Name, Country (Vine Leaves Press, 2020), The Crimes of Clara Turlington (Vine Leaves Press, 2015), and Inappropriate Sleepover (The National Poetry Review Press, 2014). Without: Body, Name, Country was nominated for the Goodreads Choice Awards, The Crimes of Clara Turlington won the Vignette Collection Award, and Inappropriate Sleepover was the runner-up for the Rousseau Prize for Literature. Her writing has appeared in Bust Magazine, Hobart, Ms. Magazine, Nashville Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Sugar House Review, Verse Daily, and many other publications. Meg received her MFA in Creative Writing from the NEOMFA Program and has taught writing for various colleges and organizations. She was the editor of Dressing Room Poetry Journal from 2012 to 2022 and has served as an external reviewer for University of Akron Press since 2016. Her website is: megjohnson.org
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Ashley Crantas, Copy Editor & Proofreader |
Ashley "Ash" Crantas is a writer and editor from Georgia. Ash has been fascinated with storytelling since she was a kid and has a soft spot for fantasy, sci-fi, and mythology. After pursuing journalism in college, she became a professional editor for several small, independent publishers across the country.
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