Merritt Tierce is an American short-story author, story editor, essayist, activist, and novelist. Tierce was born in Texas and attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, receiving her MFA in Fiction in 2011. She previously taught at the University of Iowa. She was a founding board member of the Texas Equal Access Fund and previously worked as Executive Director of the TEA. She currently resides in Los Angeles and is a writer for Orange is the New Black.