Melissa Petro is a freelance writer and the author of Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification, published by Putnam Books, a division of Penguin Random House. As a workshop facilitator, she’s helped hundreds of people push through fear, write, share, and even publish their most vulnerable stories in national publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Salon, The Washington Post, and elsewhere, and has helped still more individuals re-envision their lives by making meaning of their past and transcending traumatic experiences.

For three years, she ran a writing and wellness retreat in Sri Lanka and is the founder of Becoming Writers, a transformational language arts program that ran therapeutic writing workshops for underheard populations, including LGBTQ homeless youth, underage victims of commercial sexual exploitation, and active and recovering drug users, as well as current, former, and transitioning sex workers. She holds a BA in Women’s Studies from Antioch College, an M.Ed in Childhood Education from Fordham University, and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the New School, and was on the faculty in the Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program at Goddard College until the school’s closure in August 2024.