Mary Melton is an award-winning editor, writer, and editorial director with decades of experience helping authors and major brands create and elevate storytelling. Melton founded Smakdab, an editorial consultancy whose clients include The New Yorker, Pop-Up Magazine, Microsoft, Nike, and Google, among others. She also serves as Editor at Large for Alta Journal, the award-winning quarterly about California and the West. As Editor-in-Chief of Los Angeles magazine, she led the team to 12 National Magazine Award nominations and three wins, along with multiple James Beard Foundation Awards for food coverage. She is the creator and co-host of Riveted, a podcast about the art and craft of storytelling. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York magazine, California Sunday, and Washingtonian, among others. She has won the PEN Center USA Literary Journalism Award for her profile of photographer Julius Shulman, and the Los Angeles Press Club Award for travel writing.