wyoming writers, Inc.

Melissa Cook, President

Melissa Cook grew up in Detroit and Tucson before moving to Wyoming to marry Elgin Cook. Together they raised three boys in bush Alaska while working as teachers and school district administrators. Today, Melissa is an extension educator for the University of Wyoming.

Melissa’s best-selling memoir “The Call of the Last Frontier” won the Western Horizon Award in 2022 and was the High Plains Books Award finalist in 2022. “Wyoming Jeepers Trail Guide” is her latest publication (2024).

In her spare time, Melissa volunteers for the local fire department, maintains her EMT certification, and creates videos for her Wyoming Jeepers YouTube channel.

Edith Cook, Vice-President

Miss Edith publishes opinion for the online Cheyenne Post. Her most recent is on fentanyl, “The F-Drug.” In addition, her work has appeared in several anthologies and many literary magazines.  

Miss Edith worked as translator before immigrating and marrying in California. She taught writing and literature at a number of colleges and universities, including at Historically Black Colleges or Universities (HBCUs) in Nashville, TN. In Wyoming, she received the Wyoming Arts Council’s Frank D. Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award.  Visit her at www.edithcook.com, where she uses her nom de plume, Miss Edith at Windy Acres.

Alex Kasubowski was born and raised in Michigan moving to Wyoming in 2020 with her husband. Her favorite thing to do is spend time with her husband and dog. Alex is new to writing and currently working on 2 fiction novels. She is excited to be a novice on the board and to learn and grow in a community with endless imagination.

Rochelle Hampton, Supporting Board Member

I am the author of a speculative fiction romance short story published in the second volume of the anthology series, A Season for Romance: Summer Simmer published by Sand Kittens Press in 2023. I am also a playwright currently working in education. I have a background in theater and have written and directed a one-act play at an arts center in Kansas. Currently, I am writing an urban fantasy trilogy and work as an Instructor of Adult Basic Education at Casper College. My work is an unflinching exploration of the darker side of human relations and society with a dash of romance thrown in. 

Erik Saulness, Supporting Board Member

Erik Saulness is a father, a US Navy Veteran, a former social worker, and an unenthusiastic representative of Generation X. He holds an MA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing in Fiction and his first novel, "The Pack", is being released this November from 5 Prince Publishing. Erik enjoys collecting pointless trivia and is prone to using this collection to argue any side of an argument that he feels is being underrepresented at any given time, regardless of his feelings on the topic. He can be found in Johnson County on the outskirts of Buffalo. If you approach him in his natural habitat he is best disarmed with offerings of coffee or a token Star Wars reference to show that you can be trusted.

andrew Call, Past President

Andrew Call is a writer and photographer living in Laramie. Short stories are his bread and butter, but like any self-respecting/self-loathing fiction writer, he’s got half-formed skeletons of a novel or two collecting dust in the closet.

Andrew graduated from the University of Wyoming in 2010 with a focus on marketing, advertising, and creative writing. He's a supporter of the Oxford comma.He has worked professionally from the technical end of the writing spectrum—website copy for a restaurant supply business in Colorado, back cover book blurbs, and copy editing for an independent publisher out of Washington, copywriting for a content marketing company based in Nevada—but every so often, he’s drawn back by the siren song of short fiction.

Millie Copper, Treasurer

Millie Copper was born in Nebraska but never lived there. Her parents fully embraced wanderlust and moved regularly, giving her an advantage of being from nowhere and everywhere.

Millie Copper lives in the wilds of Wyoming with her husband and young son, tending chickens and attempting a food forest on their small homestead.

Since 2009, Millie has authored articles on traditional foods, alternative health, homesteading, and preparedness—many times all within the same piece. Millie has penned seven nonfiction, traditional food focused books.

In 2019, Millie published her bestselling Christian Post-Apocalyptic series Havoc in Wyoming, and has since written two more series, using her homesteading, off-the-grid, and preparedness lifestyle as a guide.