Melissa Hekkers is a Belgian freelance journalist and author, who has frequently been featured in mainstream news outlets and other publications in Cyprus. Since 2015, Melissa has been teaching creative writing to children and adults. She also focuses on silenced communities in Cyprus: she writes about migrants, both as a reporter and an author; profiles them and teaches them creative and script writing skills through European-funded programmes. In 2007, soon after graduating with a Communications degree, she published her first children's book in both English and Greek, entitled Crocodile, which won the Cyprus State Illustration Award. In 2012, she launched her second children's book Flying across Red Skies (in English and Greek), using an experimental approach to literature, for which she was nominated for the Cyprus State Literary award. Her third, similarly well-received children's book was Pupa (Greek and English), published in 2014 and adapted as a theatre play in 2019. In between her last two books, she published her first free-verse poetry book entitled Come-forth. In 2019 she was contributing author to the anthology Nicosia Beyond Barriers: Voices from a Divided City, published by Saqi Books, London. Amir's Blue Elephant is her first creative non-fiction. She lives and works in Cyprus.
