Blogs

The Witch Demands a Retraction: Fairy Tale Reboots for Adults, a collection of hilarious poems by Melissa Balmain, puts a grown-up, contemporary spin on the stories and characters we all learned as children, from Little Red Riding Hood, to the Three Bears, the Pied Piper and Cinderella. Each is delightfully depicted in full color by Ron Barrett (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs), who’s known as one of the best award-winning illustrators in the business.

"This is an extremely irresponsible book — imprudent, unconscionable, certain to emotionally scar impressionable children for life. I highly recommend it," says Gene Weingarten, syndicated humor columnist for The Washington Post.

Melissa edits Light, America's longest-running journal of light verse. Her humor has appeared in The American Bystander, Lighten Up Online, McSweeney's, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Success, The Washington Post and Weekly Humorist. Her full-length poetry collection, Walking in on People (winner of the Able Muse Book Award), has been praised by Poet Laureate Billy Collins as "an infectious, often hilarious blend of the sweet and the lethal, the charming and the acidic."

She recently was named Humor Writer of the Month by the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop.