Melissa Petro discusses & signs SHAME ON YOU: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification with Tiffanie Drayton (BLACK AMERICAN REFUGEE) and Erin Khar (STRUNG OUT)

Melissa Petro is a journalist whose writing has been featured in The Washington Post, Allure, Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone, Good Housekeeping, The Guardian, InStyle, and many other national publications. She was a finalist for the PEN/Fusion Emerging Writers Prize, and she holds a bachelor in Women’s Studies from Antioch and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from The New School. She lives with her husband and two young children in Upstate New York.

Erin Khar is a writer and advocate who has established herself as a respected voice in the national conversation about the overdose epidemic. She is the author of STRUNG OUT, of which The New York Times writes, "The thrill of an early Bret Easton Ellis novel — except Khar’s characters aren’t nihilists. Khar’s buoyant writing doesn’t get mired in her dark subject matter.... This is a story she needed to tell; and the rest of the country needs to listen.” Her long-running advice column, Ask Erin, lives on Substack and her personal essays have appeared in The Times of London Sunday Magazine, SELF, Marie Claire, Salon, HuffPost, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, and elsewhere. Erin’s essay, “Guilty,” was published in Burn it Down: Women Writing About Anger. She was the recipient of a 2012 Eric Hoffer Editor's Choice Prize for her story, "Last House at the End of the Street," which was published in the Best New Writing 2012 anthology. In 2023, Erin was the recipient of a Walter E. Dakin fellowship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. When she’s not writing, Erin is probably watching Beverly Hills, 90210. She lives in New York City. 

Tiffanie Drayton is a mother, world traveler, journalist and author of the memoir "Black American Refugee: Escaping the Narcissism of the American Dream."  Her work has been featured on The Daily Show, PBS News Hour, MSNBC and in publications including The New York Times, CNN, Vox, Marie Claire, Playboy, Salon, and Complex, Yahoo and many others. She has published two nonfiction young adult books, Developing Political Leadership Skills and Coping with Gun Violence. Drayton currently resides in Jersey City, NJ.