About Melissa

Melissa A. Trainer Communications, LLC is a Seattle-based writing, public relations, and consulting company specializing in topics and products related to food and the culinary arts.

Since 1995, Melissa “Missy” Trainer has written on food and travel on a freelance basis for many national, international and local newspapers and magazines. Her areas of specialty and expertise include culinary techniques, cookbook reviews, restaurant reviews, ecotourism, Northwest seafood and shellfish, sport fishing, family camping and foraging, and regional food purveyors and farmers.

Melissa is a regular contributor to Amazon's Al Dente blog. 

Missy’s experience also includes a stint as a Cooking Instructor for Puget Consumer Coops Foodworks!, where she taught basic demonstration classes using a curriculum and recipes specifically designed for PCC’s discriminating customers.

From 1989 to 1995, Missy served in various editorial positions at Gourmet Magazine, a Conde Nast Publication, in New York, including Assistant Editor responsible for fact checking and editing monthly recipe columns and working closely with Gourmet ‘s top food editors on a daily basis. Missy also authored a monthly bylined question and answer column, “The Cook’s Corner,” in which she covered a broad range of cooking topics in a style designed to appeal to cooks of all skill levels and interests. “The Cook’s Corner” repeatedly scored “very interesting” in Gourmet ‘s monthly reader surveys.

Missy was assistant to the magazine’s travel editor, Patricia J. Bell. Her responsibilities included proofreading Mrs. Bell’s monthly column, “Travel Journal,” as well as working with top national and international travel contacts.

Missy also composed press releases and general promotional copy, coordinated media mailings and press kits, and assisted in the magazine’s executive dining room during special advertising events for Gourmet’s Promotion and Marketing Department.

Missy earned a B.A. from Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut. She is active in the American Society of Journalists and Authors and National Writers Union.

Her hobbies and experiences include organic gardening, family camping, and backyard chicken farming. During 2005 and 2006, Missy lived in Anchorage, Alaska, where she traveled, fished, and camped extensively throughout the America’s Last Frontier, Yukon Territory and British Columbia. She also traversed the historic Alaska Canada Highway, camping in her 23 foot Aerolite travel trailer.