Homestead

The Believer Magazine | By Melissa Scholes Young | June 24, 2021

“Survivor Jane is not what I expected. Her auburn hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and her lips are painted tomato red. She wears a khaki button-down shirt, fitted cargo pants, and sturdy leather work boots snug on her petite frame. Survivor Jane steps out from the podium to hype us. She has the swagger of a woman still glowing in her fifteen minutes of fame from being featured on a 2015 episode of the National Geographic Channel’s “Doomsday Preppers” along side her husband, Rick “The Survivalist Gardener” Austin.”

Your Class is Showing

Brevity | By Melissa Scholes Young | June 9, 2021

“At a reading for my first novel, a reader waited patiently at the microphone and asked, “Why would someone like you write about people like this?”

My friend in the front row shook their head. The bookseller hosting me inched closer. I smiled and asked back, “Someone like me? People like this?” The audience laughed. It relieved the tension.”

Writing With Intention: On Hiring a Sensitivity Reader

Writer’s Digest | By Melissa Scholes Young | June 8, 2021

“Whether you’re looking to pitch your work to an agent or are setting out on your self-publishing journey, author Melissa Scholes Young has some tips for hiring a sensitivity reader to up-level your work.”

On Writing The Hive

Women Writers, Women’s Books | By Melissa Scholes Young | June 8, 2021

“Dear Reader,

Political and personal struggles are rifting our hometowns, our communities, and our families. They are occurring on the dirt road I grew up on in rural Missouri near the banks of the Mississippi River and near the campus where I teach in Washington, D.C.”

What Needs Done: The Love and Burden of a Family Business

Literary Hub | By Melissa Scholes Young | April 12, 2021

“On the radio in the 1980s, between the latest hits by Richard Marx and Madonna, my eight-year-old voice told the tri-state area of Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa about our family’s pest control business. Dad thought a commercial would bring in new clients who needed peanut butter glueboards and termite inspections. One night after work he brought home a tape recorder with a plug-in microphone. We stayed up late at the kitchen table rewriting our script. I learned not to breathe too much or my voice was muddled. We taped over my mistakes. I tried again and again to sound the way he wanted me to with my signature line: “When you call, tell ‘em Missy sent you.” My brothers mocked me every time it played on the radio, but the local celebrity was plenty.”

Thank You, Rush Limbaugh, For My Feminism

Ms. Magazine | By Melissa Scholes Young | February 18, 2021

“Every morning when my dad left for work as a pest control technician, his truck stirred up a cloud of dust on our dirt road in rural Missouri. It was a kind of magic to watch him disappear into a plume of earth. 

Mom and I would watch at the window and wave. Then she’d grab my hand and we’d run to the record player. Our first record was always “You Don’t Own Me” by Lesley Gore. We’d sing along while I cleared the breakfast dishes and she washed.”

Author Intro: “The Hive” by Melissa Scholes Young

By Turner Publishing | November 30, 2020

“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. If only there was a son to lead rural Missouri insect control and guide the way through a crumbling patriarchy.”

On the Extravagance of Mark Twain’s Family Dishes

Literary Hub | By Melissa Scholes Young | November 24, 2020

“Susan Crane’s china isn’t at Quarry Farm anymore. Or at least I can’t find it. I’m rummaging through every cupboard, cabinet, and sideboard looking for it. At Quarry Farm, the family home where Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, summered and wrote his most important works, I search for Susan Crane’s dishes to set the table for my own family’s Thanksgiving meal.”

Seeing Your Hometown Through the Fresh Eyes of Fiction

Literary Hub | By Melissa Scholes Young | June 30, 2017

“Hometowns—and the way we remember our hometowns—are a delicate thing. Memory seems to often divide our perspectives into two possible directions: nostalgia and yearning or resentment and aversion. Some of us feel that we must leave, while others simply cannot fathom any reason to do so.”