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 1969 - 2006
Melissa died in April 2006 aged just 37 from cancer. She was a successful journalist who went on to become one of the best-selling comic romantic novelists of her generation. She wrote with an intelligence and intuition that went far beyond many love stories aimed at young women - she focused on the world of work for the post-feminist generation in the hugely popular novels The Nanny (2002) and The Waitress (2004). Her final book, The Learning Curve, which was published in August 2006, has a teacher as heroine. Creating credible, sympathetic, modern characters that her readers identified with and desperately wanted to fall in love with, was her greatest strength. Melissa’s heroines always achieved more than just falling in love - as a feminist herself she created rounded characters struggling to find their vocation, and she skilfully observed the social, family and career pressures faced by young women today. The Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance has been set up by Melissa’s husband, Andrew Saffron – honouring the criteria that Melissa drew up herself very shortly before she died. She wanted to encourage and reward writers who can combine in a novel the magical, life-enhancing elements of humour and love.
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