Melissa M. Cybulski is a local historian, museum guide, and author based in Western Massachusetts. As Vice-President of the Longmeadow Historical Society, she has done extensive research, writing, and presenting on a variety of topics of import to her community’s history particularly as they relate to the untold stories of women, children, and the enslaved. Most notably, Cybulski has partnered with UMass-Amherst for their Documenting Early Black Lives in the Connecticut River Valley project which led to a collaboration between the Witness Stones Project and the Longmeadow Public Schools. In April 2024, she published her first book, a middle-readers novel called Appleseeds: A Boy Named Johnny Chapman, about the Massachusetts childhood of the boy who would become famous as Johnny Appleseed. Her other professional passion is the 19th century world of poet, Emily Dickinson, and she has been a museum guide and researcher at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst since 2017.