Today’s guest is Melanie Thorne, who earned her MA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Davis, where she worked with Pam Houston and Lynn Freed. Her thesis there was the first draft of what later became her debut novel, Hand Me Down,  which has been widely praised. Melanie joined me today to talk about presenting a memoir through the veil of fiction, and how the reading audience sometimes gets a thrill out of the consumption of another’s pain.