I loved your book. I loved it so much. I just want to gush about it for the whole interview. It was one of those books that makes me feel like everything else is so fake and phony and this is one of the only things I've read that's about real life and being a woman. It's so real that I wonder if you had to put pressure on yourself as you were writing to be honest and not to worry about what readers would think. [continue]
On the dark side of being a high-end waiter: It’s a stage, it’s a performance. You’re expected to provide a very specific experience for people who expect very specific things in their lives related to wealth. The more money you have, the easier it is to see people as tools. And you can create so much distance around yourself with your money that you forget that the people that are doing things for you are also people. [continue]
But the fact that Tierce didn’t censor her writing is what makes Love Me Back astonishing and so honest that it feels like a gift. [continue]
And while it's a hard life on the page, Love Me Back is also filled with the kindness and humor that people offer one another when they know there's no one else. [continue]
[Love Me Back] reads sharp as the cuts Marie inflicts on herself: pathos and pain held in tight, and no obvious redemption. [continue]
Included with the audio version of LOVE ME BACK, produced by Recorded Books and offered at audible.com. The audio book is narrated by Saskia Maarleveld.
Merritt Tierce’s debut novel is great, and you should buy it...it is a beautifully bleak, sex- and drug-filled story. [continue]
photograph by Jeremy Sharp
Tierce’s world is populated by waitresses, busboys, and bar-backs, outcasts whose artistry is in the relentlessness of their movements and in their ability to endure one more shift while keeping reasonably upbeat and obscene. [continue]
photograph by Kael Alford
The book is at once beautiful, sexy, and uncomfortable. [continue]
The art rock musician says "I just read a book called Love Me Back...It’s excellent."
"We've had a lot of increased interest in volunteering with our work," says Merritt Tierce, executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, a group that helps low-income women pay for abortions. "The most important thing that has come out of this is [a] conversation about abortion that needs to continue, that needs to intensify and that needs to stay focused on the complexities." [continue]
drawing by Kate Gavino
Five songs selected by Merritt that evoke the vibe of the novel LOVE ME BACK.
MT: I also think gender affects the reception of the subject matter. A man writes a sex scene or a domestic scene and it's an element of a larger narrative—a function, an expression, a grappling-with. A woman writes a sex scene or a domestic scene and poof she's not a serious writer. She's writing homey soft shit that dudes don't want to read about. An irony here is that women buy and read more books than men, so if dudes don't want to read about something the publishers don't have to care. Critics and reviewers, on the other hand, are more often men than women, and are trying to sell their own ideas, not books. [continue]
MT: Many women will continue unwanted pregnancies because they have no other options. Because of the shame and stigma that surround abortion, we may not hear these stories in detail; however we know that, historically, this is what happens when abortion access is restricted. [continue]
A new video to promote the work of abortion funds during National Abortion Access Month. Watch these inspiring activists, including Merritt, talk about how vital abortion access is.
MT: I oppose Senate Bill 1 because it has been put forth as legislation that will protect women and raise the standard of care in abortion clinics in Texas, but the measures it contains will in fact endanger women's lives by closing most Texas abortion clinics while they come up to code as ASCs, a process that will take a great deal of time and money to put in place unnecessary new requirements that do nothing to raise the standard of care or even change the way abortion procedures are currently performed. [continue]