Melissa Chadburn

A True Crime

After murder came with shocking suddenness to my small town, I started questioning the storytelling ethics of a genre in which I myself had a stake.

Fueled by the Failings of Foster Care

The memoirist and writer on how her childhood experience has directed both her activism and creative work.

‘Hansel and Gretel’ in LA County

The stories of children with open investigations by the Department of Children and Family Services remind me of fairy tales from another dark time.

A Duet on Girlhood

In the end I ran, and like with the bird and the sky above Beretta, and the mutt Morris who was let out into the strange lonely streets, and a loaded gun between kids, there was a sinking, sickening excitement when I made my mother cry.

The Food of My Youth

We ate quickly and with our hands. We lived as people without money do, with a sense of impending doom that everything as we knew it could end at any time.

Counting to a Hundred

That’s when it hit me. My one hundred rule. I needed to use the same thing I had already learned about gathering signatures for petitions and getting out the vote and union organizing, and apply it to getting published.