Dr. Melody Glenn is an author and associate professor of addiction and emergency medicine at the University of Arizona. 

Book: Her first book, Mother of Methadone, is a hybrid memoir published by Beacon Press (2025) that weaves her own story as an addiction physician with that of the history of methadone maintenance and its founder, the radical Dr. Marie Nyswander.

Literary: With an MFA in prose from Mills College, Dr. Glenn is a 2020 Tin House Summer Workshop alum and a 2024 deGroot Foundation Finalist. Her work has been supported by the El Sur Artist Residency in Mexico City (2024), a grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts (2024), and a nomination for a Pushcart Prize by River Teeth for her essay, “Naloxone, Syringes, and Pipes” (2024). Her articles have been published in Salon, Time, Literary Hub, Mutha Magazine, and the Arizona Republic, and are forthcoming in The Believer. She is represented by Ayla Zuraw-Friedland at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency.

Medical: She graduated with her M.D. from The University of Southern California, completed her emergency medicine residency at Maricopa Medical Center, and earned her EMS fellowship from The University of California, San Francisco. Triple-boarded in emergency medicine, EMS, and addiction medicine, she is an associate professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, the medical director for several fire departments in Southern Arizona, the director of the addiction medicine consult service at Banner University Medical Center Tucson, the director of the outpatient addiction medicine Whole Health Clinic, and a board member of Cochise Harm Reduction.