Merritt Tierce is an American short story author, story editor, essayist, activist, and novelist. [1] Tierce was born in Texas and attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, receiving her MFA in Fiction in 2011. [2] She previously taught at the University of Iowa. [3] She was a founding board member of the Texas Equal Access Fund and previously worked as Executive Director of the TEA. [4] [5] [6] She currently resides in Los Angeles and is a writer for Orange is the New Black. [7]
Tierce was a writer for seasons six and seven of Orange is the New Black. [18]
Tierce grew up in Texas in a strongly Christian household. [18] She graduated from Abilene Christian University at 1997 [19] with a Bachelors degree, age 19, having started college two years early. [18] Slated to start a graduate program at Yale School of Divinity the next year, her plans changed due to a pregnancy and ensuing marriage to the father of her unborn child, an event she sardonically described as a child bride in a shotgun wedding. [18] (She never went to Yale, but earned a Masters of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers Workshop [20] about fifteen years later.) [18]
Tierce was unable to consider abortion due to her religious beliefs at the time (she had written and presented against it while unknowingly pregnant). [18] She also couldn't consider giving up her first child to adoption,
The couple had a second child, a daughter, about a year later. [19] They eventually divorced, continued an amicable co-parenting. [18] Tierce remarried around age 36, and has a stepdaughter. [19]