Melanie Morey Jeschke (pronounced jes-key), a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and graduated from the University of Virginia as a Phi Beta Kappa with an Honors degree in English Literature and a minor in European and English History. Melanie lived a semester in Paris and has traveled throughout Europe and the Middle East. She has made numerous trips to Great Britain and organized a group tour to Scotland and England that included a stay at J.R.R. Tolkien’s Merton College in Oxford. She has attended three conferences on C. S. Lewis at Oxford and Cambridge Universities and served as the Oxford information hostess for the C. S. Lewis Foundation. Her oldest daughter Katherine attended Oxford University for a term and played on the University Women's football (soccer) team. Melanie's various trips to the UK inspired her novels The Oxford Chronicles: Inklings containing the sequel Intentions, July 2004; Expectations, March 2005; and Evasions, a “prequel” set in WWII, August 2006. An earlier edition of Inklings (without Intentions) was published by Xulon Press in 2002. A free-lance travel writer, Melanie contributed the Oxford chapter to the Rick Steves’ England 2006 guidebook. She is a member of the Capital Christian Writers and Christian Fiction Writers as well as three book clubs, and taught high-school English before home-schooling most of her nine children. Melanie lectures on Lewis and Tolkien, Oxford, and writing, and gives inspirational talks to all manner of groups, including university classes, women’s clubs, young professionals, teens, and school children. A fourth generation pastor’s wife (her father Dr. Earl Morey is a retired Presbyterian minister), Melanie resides in the Greater Washington, D.C. area with her children and husband Bill Jeschke, a soccer coach and the Senior Pastor of The King’s Chapel, an non-denominational Christian church in Fairfax, Virginia. WORLD Magazine featured an article on Melanie in their July '06 book issue and listed her recommendations for children's books in their Dec 2 '06 Kids' book issue. |
Melanie at C.S Lewis's desk in his Oxford home, The Kilns. Melanie is very grateful to the C.S. Lewis Foundation for their on-going support and inspiration. |