Dr. Melanie Sue Hicks is an author, book coach, and publisher committed to helping meaningful stories find their clearest and strongest form. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Inked Elephant Publishing House, a nonprofit independent press dedicated to publishing social impact nonfiction and poetry by first-time and emerging authors. Through her work as a book coach, she helps writers shape ideas, strengthen manuscripts, and move from concept to publication with clarity and purpose.

Her own writing is deeply informed by a life shaped through travel, service, and reflection on resilience, adaptability, and human connection. Having traveled more than 120,000 miles across 47 countries and contributed more than 2,500 hours of community-based work, Dr. Hicks brings a global perspective to the page and to the authors she supports. She is the author of Incongruent: Travel, Trauma, Transformation, a memoir about rebuilding after life’s wreckage, and the curator of Shaking Off the Ashes, a poetry collection centered on resilience.

Dr. Hicks holds a doctorate from the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University, a Master of Public Administration from the University of Miami, and a bachelor’s degree in Organizational Communication from the University of Central Florida.