She writes picture books, short stories and novels for children and young adults and lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
[2] As a child, some of her favourite books were Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder and The Moon in the Cloud by Rosemary Harris,[1] among many others.
With a group of other writers, she runs an online writing initiative for children called FABO Story.
[12] In 2014, Melinda Szymanik lived in Dunedin for six months[18] as the University of Otago College of Education / Creative New Zealand Children's Writer in Residence.
[19] She was the recipient of a University of Otago Wallace Residency at the Pah Homestead, Auckland, in 2015.