Melody Steiner

Melody Steiner is a writer, poet, and a chronic overthinker hailing from NE Ohio. Born in Pasadena, California, she spent formative years living in Maryland, Missouri, Washington State, and the city of Columbus before finally landing near the shores of the grand North Coast (aka Lake Erie). Her very first job, at age fifteen in Maryland, was at a public library. She must have gotten too cozy and nested in the stacks then, because, despite all the geographical and life changes, she never did leave libraries. Her day job as an academic librarian now involves grappling with database beasts, releasing brazen books out into the wild, and warmongering with disruptive technologies. On hikes, she swears she’s seen South Bay Bessie in the Lake and the Melon Heads near Kirtland…but that could just be her overactive imagination from all the books she’s consumed.

Melody bridges her love of books, libraries, and providing access to information with her own penchant for daydreaming by participating in writing communities, first-reading for magazines, teaching research classes for Writing the Other, and serving on the APALA literature committees. Her creative work has appeared in New Myths.com, Star*Line, 3Elements Literary Review, and Strange Horizons under her penname, which adopts her maternal surname, S.R. Tombran. Someday, she will find the time to stop feeling sad about the em dash and finally finish her novel. In the meantime, catch her on Bluesky or check out an in-progress site she is slowly building about women and BIPOC librarians during the years when professionalization of librarianship first began: https://sites.google.com/view/women-and-poc-librarians/home