Melissa Amateis grew up on a farm near Bridgeport, Nebraska. She holds a BA in history from Chadron State College and an MA in history from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL). She is an editorial assistant for two academic journals at the Center for Great Plains Studies at UNL, and has authored two nonfiction books, Nebraska POW Camps: A History of World War II Prisoners in the Heartland (2014) and World War II Nebraska (2020), both from The History Press. Amateis lives with her daughter in eastern Nebraska.