Biography

Melissa Birks writes features and specializes in historical fiction. She enjoys mining history for hidden gems -- people who may have fallen to footnotes but who have rich stories to share. As a former journalist, she is skilled at research, including navigating databases of old newspapers to pluck just the right headline or anecdote that will lend an authentic flair to her scripts. As a writer for her entire professional career, she is skilled at deftly weaving facts with fiction.

Her subjects often focus on a unique genre of true crime: serial killers. A Jack the Ripper origin story that she wrote placed as a quarterfinalist in the Nicholl Fellowship in 2010. That script took place at a Victorian-era zoo and, indeed, was inspired by a seasonal job she once held as a tour guide at a large zoo. An animal lover, she also writes about the human-animal bond, a theme best expressed in a recent project about a Victorian-era elephant and his keeper.

Melissa is a Michigan native who worked for five small and mid-sized newspapers around the country before pursuing her screenwriting goals. She moved to Los Angeles in 2019 after earning her MFA in screenwriting from DePaul University in Chicago.
- IMDb mini biography by: Melissa Birks