Melanie Thernstrom is the author of two books: the best-selling memoir The Dead Girl (Pocket, 1990) and Halfway Heaven: Diary of a Harvard Murder (Doubleday, 1997). The Dead Girl is an account of the disappearance and murder of her best friend, Bibi Lee. Halfway Heaven—the story of a murder-suicide of two students at Harvard University—began as an article for The New Yorker. It explores murder from the point of view of the killer, based on diaries discovered after the deaths.

A contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, Melanie has reported on subjects as diverse as high-end matchmaking, mediated divorce, the Lord’s Resistance Army in Northern Uganda, medicine, and fugitives. She has also written for Elle, Food and Wine, Travel+Leisure, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal and other publications. She has taught creative writing at Cornell University, Harvard University, and in the MFA program at University of California at Irvine. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

She is currently at work on a book about physical pain for Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. She lives with her husband near Portland, Oregon and in New York City. More about Melanie and her work can be found at www.melaniethernstrom.com.