Mel is a playwright, performer, journalist and mum to her son Stan. She was born in Gisborne in 1972 and moved to Palmerston North when she was nine. She went to Palmerston North Girls High School and Awatapu College. Her mum was a teacher and her dad produced programmes for National Radio.
In 1991 she moved to Dunedin where she studied for a law degree and a BA in English. After being in a capping show in her third year, she quickly changed her BA major to Drama and soon began writing and performing with Rochelle Savage as the comedy duo Laura Get Your Gun.
She wrote and directed her first play Naughty Bad Girls for the 1996 Wellington Fringe Festival which went surprisingly well. Later that year she was commissioned to write Phobia for the STAB season. Ten days out from this show she discovered she was rather pregnant with her son Stanley (now three and a half). After taking a break from writing in 1997, she received a commission to write The Rising Scone for the 1998 Young and Hungry season. Since then she has written and performed her solo comedy show I'm having it off with Ajax and last year she wrote and directed How he hated the Grand Canyon.
This year Mel has stepped sideways into fiction writing and documentary making. She lives in Island Bay and she shares the care of Stan with his father Duncan.