Melissa Chan has lived in Europe, the United States of America and, briefly, China. After growing up in the West Australian wheat belt, she moved to the Eastern seaboard where she works as a lawyer. Her fiction has appeared in Ita, Womanspeak and other magazines.  

She is a contributor to the first Spinifex Press anthology, Angels of Power and other reproductive creations. 

The Melissa Chan detective novels feature feminist detective heroine Francesca Miles. They include One too many (1991), Getting your man (1992), More on getting your man (1994). She has also edited a crime anthology, A modern woman and other crimes, with J. Terry, and Guilt (1995).