Melissa Scholes Young
Melissa Scholes Young is the author of the award-winning novels Flood and The Hive. She received the Shelf Unbound Best Book Award in 2021 and the Next Generation Indie Book Award in 2023. She’s published two chapbooks, Scrap Metal Baby and Guinea Pig. She serves as Editor of Grace in Darkness, Furious Gravity, Grace in Love, and Grit & Gravity, anthologies by D.C. women writers. Her essays have appeared in the Atlantic, Ms., Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Brevity, Literary Hub, Joyland, Gargoyle, and Believer Magazine. Her poetry chapbook, Another Word for Longing: Saudade (FLP, fall 2026), won 1st Honorable Mention in the New Women’s Voices series. A first generation college student from Hannibal, Missouri, she is Professor in Creative Writing Program at the University of Kentucky.
Featured Book
The Hive
The Fehler sisters wanted to be more than bug girls but growing up in a fourth- generation family pest control business in rural Missouri, their path was fixed. The family talked about Fehler Family Exterminating at every meal, even when their mom said to separate the business from the family, an impossible task. They tried to escape work with trips to their trailer camp on the Mississippi River, but the sisters did more fighting than fishing. After Robbie Fehler’s sudden death, the surprising details of succession in his will are revealed. He’s left the company to a distant cousin, assuming the women of the family aren’t capable. To survive, they must overcome a political chasm that threatens a new civil war as the values that once united them now divide the very foundation
Meet Melissa Scholes Young and get a copy of their book at the 2026 Kentucky Book Festival, Saturday, November 7, 2026, at Joseph-Beth Booksellers.