Melissa Atkinson Mercer | Glass Poetry Press

Melissa Atkinson Mercer (ghost exhibit) is the author of the full-length poetry collections Knock (Half Mystic Press, 2018) and Saint of the Partial Apology (Five Oaks Press, 2017), as well as five chapbooks. Her work has recently appeared iinTinderbox Poetry Journal, Moon City Review, A Portrait in Blues: An Anthology of Identity, Gender, and Bodies, and others. She has an MFA from West Virginia University, where she won the Russell MacDonald Creative Writing Award in Poetry. She currently works and teaches at Lees-McRae College.

Mercer is skilled in making simplicity work to her advantage, beginning with the brilliant structure of the collection and extending to the way repetition is turned into a strength and stylistic staple.

— Margaryta Golovchenko, on Knock