Mel Edden is a British poet based in Monkton, MD. Her poems appear in Gargoyle, The Loch Raven Review, WWPH Writes, Welter, FotoSpecchio and various anthologies. A Best of the Net nominee (2025) and a MVICW Parent Writers Fellowship recipient (2025), Mel is currently working towards her first solo collection.

Growing up in rural Hampshire, UK, Mel went to school in Liphook and took her A-Levels at Alton College. She majored in French and Italian at Swansea University in South Wales with a year at the Università degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo in Italy. Her postgraduate studies were in Primary Education from the University of Wales, Newport with a specialism in art.

Mel has worked in study aboard administration for Cambridge University and Johns Hopkins University. She taught Year 4 at Howell’s School in Cardiff before settling in Maryland with her husband in 2009 and raising two little Americans.

Much of Mel’s late teens and early twenties were spent songwriting, performing and recording with various indie bands. Poetry followed.