Melissa Petro is a cultural journalist and author of Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification, a hybrid memoir and cultural investigation into how shame shapes women’s lives. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation and New York Magazine.

As a survivor of sexual exploitation and mass media humiliation, she knows personally the devastation that weaponized sexist shame can have on a woman’s life.  Since 2010, she has helped hundreds of girls and women push through fear and write, share and even publish their most vulnerable stories in national publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Salon, The Washington Post and elsewhere, and helping others re-envision their lives by making meaning of their past and transcending traumatic experiences.

For three years, Melissa ran a writing and wellness retreat in Sri Lanka and is the founder of Becoming Writers, a transformational language arts program that ran therapeutic writing workshops for under-heard populations. Melissa holds a BA in Women’s Studies from Antioch College, an M.Ed in Childhood Education from Fordham University, and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the New School, and was on the faculty of Goddard College’s Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program.  https://www.melissa-petro.com