The Autumnal Winds

Melissa's interest in Japanese culture and society began in the late 1990s when she began watching anime, Japanese cartoons. During her free time, Melissa continued to learn more about Japanese culture through the anime she watched and the manga she read. Her love of Japanese culture grew so strong that she soon spent an hour a day self-teaching herself the two Japanese syllabaries-Hiragana and Katakana, along with some basic Japanese grammar and Kanji, Chinese characters used in the Japanese writing system. Melissa studied Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and Spanish at New York University's School of Professional Studies. She also studied digital photography at New York Institute of Photography. In addition, Melissa passed Level One and Level Two of the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi Test, a Chinese language proficiency and received a near perfect score on both tests. In her free time Melissa likes to study Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. She also likes to watch anime and read manga. When the weather is permitting, Melissa likes to sit outside on the porch and watch the world go by. She also enjoys going to local festivals. Melissa is a lover of all cute things and enjoys those rare moments when she can go to the zoo to see her favorite animals-sheep. In addition to enjoying trips to the zoo, Melissa also enjoys those infrequent summer day trips to the beach. However, the one thing Melissa especially enjoys above all is the experience of publishing her first light novel, The Autumnal Winds. One of the biggest surprises in Melissa's life came in 2017 when Ito En, a Japanese tea company, announced that Melissa was a semifinalist in their January 2017 Haiku Contest. Melissa was surprised to find out that her winning haiku was published in the February 25, 2017 edition of Shukan NY Seikatsu, a Japanese language weekly newspaper distributed throughout Japan and America. This gave Melissa the motivation and courage she needed to write and publish The Autumnal Winds.