Melinda Haynes is an American novelist. She grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. For much of her adult life, she was a painter. In 1999, she wrote her first published novel, Mother of Pearl, while living in a mobile home in Grand Bay, Alabama. Melinda Haynes currently resides in Mobile, Alabama, with her husband, Ray. Her writing has a close relationship to Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s.