Dr. Melvin Sterne earned his BA at the University of Washington, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude and won the John K. Woolley Memorial Scholarship (the English Department’s highest award). He earned his M.A. at the University of California at Davis, where he was nominated for Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher and carried a 4.0 GPA. Ten of the eleven stories in his Master’s Thesis were published in literary magazines. He earned his PhD at Florida State University, where he was also nominated for Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher, and where he studied with Pulitzer Prize winning author, Robert Olen Butler. He also earned a Graduate Certificate in Editing and Publishing from Florida State University.

Professor Sterne is the author of one novel, Zara, (Ink Brush Press) and one collection of short stories, The Number You Have Reached (Lamar University Press). He has published more than 30 short stories, poems, and essays, with a number of these winning awards and/or included in various anthologies.

Besides writing and teaching, Dr. Sterne has fourteen years of experience in the publishing industry, serving first as Managing Editor of the Licton Springs Review, then as Senior Editor and Publisher of Carve Magazine, as a copy editor for Government Information Quarterly, and finally as co-editor of the Blood and Honey Review. He has also worked as a consultant on a number of successful writing projects including two published novels: Local (by Jaideep Varma) and Lucky Every Day (by Bapsy Jain).

Since earning his PhD, Professor Sterne has taught at the American University of Afghanistan, the American University of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the SP Jain School of Global Management, and Shantou University.