Belinda Mellor currently lives near the beach in Tahunanui, at the Top of the South Island of New Zealand. After a decade of milking goats and collecting eggs on a lifestyle block, she now runs a motel catering for people with housing issues with her husband Peter. When not at the motel, Belinda and Peter share their love of greyhounds, steampunk activities, growing their own food, and traditional Irish and British music (Peter plays and sings, Belinda claps and carries things as required). They have one delightful and much adored adult daughter.
At the age of five Belinda won a school award for ‘free expression’ and has not stopped writing since. Back when she used to live in England, she was an inaugural winner of an Ian St James literary award for her fantasy story Bronwen’s Dowry (published with the eleven other finalists in the Collins anthology At the Stroke of Twelve). Since then she has been awarded a literary bursary and an award for a character-driven story, had numerous non-fiction and occasional fiction pieces published in magazines and local newspapers and a play for children performed by an Irish theatre-in-education company, where she was writer-in-residence for several years. Bronwen’s Dowry has been more recently republished in another prize anthology: All These Shiny Worlds and she has several other short stories in the 2022 New Zealand and Australian authors' anthology: Down Under Fantasy Realms. She is the author of two (soon to be three) mythopoeic eco-fantasy novels: Silvana – The Greening and Silvana – the Turning, and the children’s picture book A Handful of Eggs. Having been involved in the running and publication of several local arts magazines she now occasionally offers her services as a freelance editor, and is particularly proud of having worked with more than one award-winning indie author.
A background in Theology and Applied Spirituality, a lifetime interest in myths, legends, folklore and fairytales, and a passion for wild places and the environment all inform her writing.
Website: https://forestdreaming.com/
Shared blog: https://treeandleafblog.com/
Social Media links
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BelindaAnnMellor
Instagram: www.instagram.com/belindamellor
Bluesky: @belmel.bsky.social