Melissa Cistaro is a bookseller and the events coordinator at Book Passage, the legendary San Francisco Bay Area independent bookstore, where she has hosted more than 200 authors. A writer and mother of two, she has been interviewed on a number of radio shows and has been published in numerous literary journals, including the New Ohio Review, Anderbo.com, and Brevity, as well as in two anthologies alongside Anne Lamott, Jane Smiley and other writers. Melissa graduated with honors from UCLA and continued her education with the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. She has participated in the Tin House Writer’s Workshop in Portland and The Writer’s Studio in Los Angeles. She lives in San Francisco.

Books by Melissa Cistaro

Pieces of My Mother: A Memoir

by Melissa Cistaro - Nonfiction

One summer, Melissa Cistaro's mother drove off without explanation. Devastated, Melissa and her brothers were always tormented by the thought: Why did their mother abandon them? Thirty-five years later, Melissa finds herself in Olympia, Washington, as her mother is dying. After decades of hiding her painful memories, she has just days to find out what happened that summer and confront the fear that she could do the same to her kids. But Melissa never expects to stumble across a cache of letters her mother wrote to her but never sent, which could hold the answers she seeks.