Melisa Tien is a playwright and opera librettist invested in making socially relevant, emotionally evocative work that helps us imagine splendid alternative futures. An alum of New Dramatists, she is the librettist of the operas Family Style (Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, 2025), Undone (American Opera Projects, 2025), Forever (Washington National Opera, 2024), The Big Swim (Houston Grand Opera/Asia Society Texas Center, 2024 & 2025), Song of the Nightingale (On Site Opera/Arts Brookfield, 2023; Cedar Rapids Opera, 2025), and The Beehive (University of Northern Iowa, 2023); lyricist for the song cycles Swell (HERE, 2021) and Daylight Saving; author of the plays Best Life (JACK, 2021), Yellow Card, Red Card (Ice Factory, 2017), Refrain (Wild Project, 2011), Disrupted, The Boyd Show, and Familium Vulgare. She has been published in the anthologies Theater Artists Making Theatre With No Theater (Tripwire Harlot Press, 2020) and Modern Music for New Singers: 21st Century American Art Songs (North Star Music, 2021). She is currently a librettist with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’ New Works Collective, and a librettist with the American Opera Project’s Composers & the Voice program. She earned a BA in English from UCLA, and an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University.