Melanie Cheng is an award-winning author and general practitioner from Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. Her short story collection, Australia Day, won the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript and the 2018 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction.

Her debut novel, Room for a Stranger, was shortlisted for the 2020 NSW Premier’s Multicultural Award and longlisted for the 2020 Miles Franklin Award.

Her writing has been widely published in The Guardian, The Age, The Weekend Australian, Meanjin, Overland, and The Griffith Review, among others. In 2021, she was the health columnist for The Saturday Paper.

She has experience judging both the NSW Premier’s Multicultural Prize and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction. She has mentored writers through the Kill Your Darlings Mentor Program and is a guest lecturer for the Narrative Medicine Course at The University of Melbourne.

She is a current patron for Writers Victoria.