Melissa A Watkins

Black people can’t be hobbits, but white vampires just want to dance.

Read time: about 4 minutes Hello, fellow readers. I don’t seem to have the time to post bookish news updates on social media anymore, so here’s a roundup of some of the more interesting…

Read time: 13 minutes (To skip to the booklist, click here.) I’m still here. Fellow readers, I almost quit the internet last year. And last month. And last week. And about an hour ago. Rest a…

Read time: 12 minutes Man, 2025 was a weird year. The weirdest thing, perhaps, is that I’ve been saying the exact same thing for the past five years. You know how history speaks of the Renais…

So I finally saw Wicked: For Good, the second installment of the film adaptation of the stage adaptation of the novel by Gregory Maguire, which is itself a gritty reboot of both Frank L. Baum’…

[Buy the book this film is based on here] Read time: 7 minutes Last night, I saw the screen adaptation of Stephen King’s The Long Walk. While I read the book years ago, it’s one of thos…

My aunties were all prayers and pearls. I wanted glitter and laughter.

Moving to Boston after years abroad wasn't an obvious choice for Melissa A Watkins. She went looking for the real Boston not just the myth.

I need to tell you something. I need to tell you that my mother isn’t ugly. I was always told that she was.