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Melissa Balmain edits Light, America's longest-running journal of light verse. Her poetry collection Walking in on People (winner of the Able Muse Book Award) has been described by Poet Laureate Billy Collins as “an infectious, often hilarious blend of the sweet and the lethal, the charming and the acidic.” Her next book, The Witch Demands a Retraction: Fairy-tale Reboots for Adults, illustrated by Ron Barrett, is due out in 2021 from Humorist Books. (You'll find the title poem here.)

Balmain’s humor has appeared in The American Bystander, Lighten Up Online, Little Old Lady Comedy, The New Yorker, The New York Times, McSweeney’s, The Satirist, The Washington Post, Weekly Humorist and many anthologies. Read one of her pandemic-inspired poems here.

She teaches at the University of Rochester and lives nearby with her husband and two children. She is a recovering mime. You can connect with her on Twitter.