People like Melissa Bank

Melissa Susan Bank (October 11, 1960 – August 2, 2022) was an American author. She published two books—The Wonder Spot, a volume of short stories, and The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing—and won the 1993 Nelson Algren Award for short fiction. She taught at Stony Brook University.

Bank was born in Boston on October 11, 1960. Her father, Arnold, was a neurologist who died during his late fifties of leukemia, a condition he concealed for almost ten years; her mother, Joan (Levine), worked as a teacher. Bank was raised in the Philadelphia suburb of Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. In 1982, she graduated from Hobart and William Smith Colleges with a bachelor's degree in American studies. She was then employed in publishing in New York, before obtaining a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Cornell University in 1987.