Constance Merritt was born in 1966 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and studied at the Arkansas School for the Blind. She received a BA and MA from the University of Utah and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.She is the author of the poetry collections Blind Girl Grunt: The Selected Blues Lyrics and Other Poems (Headmistress Press, 2017), a finalist for the 2018 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry; Two Rooms (Louisiana State University Press, 2009); Blessings and Inclemencies (Louisiana State University Press, 2007); and A Protocol for Touch (University of North Texas Press, 2000), winner of the Vassar Miller Prize.The poet Jillian Weise writes, “Constance Merritt shows incredible range—erotic poems to a wayward lover; blues lyrics so rhythmic I can nearly hear the guitar; and devotional poems that offer ‘this, you know, is love, is all, the end.’”Merritt served as the writer-in-residence at Sweet Briar College from 2003 to 2005. She serves as poetry editor for the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion and is the co-founder of Bringing Justice Home, Inc., a food justice nonprofit  in Louisville, Kentucky. Source