Show Me Something Beautiful

Nat. Brut

by Kayla AE

MT: [Religion] was everything. Now it’s nothing, and that is my gift to myself every day. For evangelical righteousness to work you have to have a bedrock conception of yourself as fucked. Otherwise you don’t need saving. When I walked away from the practice of religion I let myself just be a person. A bipedal mammal with no god to serve or disappoint. Just a being with an unknown, unnumbered store of days ahead before it’s over, before I’ve found all the beauty I’ll ever find, which is the closest thing to a spiritual pursuit I need. Show me something beautiful, play me something beautiful, that’s why I’m here. No purpose and no reason beyond that. Just a human animal with kids to raise and stories to tell. [continue]

Pixelated Episode 1

0s & 1s Reads

by Andrew Lipstein

Andrew: How have children affected your art intake? 

Merritt: i loathed spongebob when my kids were little because it is insanely annoying as background noise. but apparently there are gems of existential profundity i totally missed.

Sarah Gerard: I can see that.

Merritt: i'm not sure how they've affected it—i like what i like, and have always been appalled by the way some people turn themselves into children when they have kids. kids' music, kids' movies, kids' everything all the time.
even the youngest kids can appreciate really complex art if it's good

Sarah: Did you notice that they were disinterested if it was bad?
I'm almost afraid to ask this, but what is bad art?
Or do you mean that if you bring them to where art is and then guide them into an appreciation, perhaps?

Merritt: yeah...i don't know if i could say. but there is definitely art my son is totally disinterested in. a lot of modern art, like video installations and conceptual pieces, he sort of scoffs at.

Sarah: What is his taste, would you say? 

Merritt:  i took him to the art institute in chicago and there was a piece i really loved—a neon sign—and he seemed personally offended that someone might have been paid money for it, as art
he's a practical person. he likes tangible, representational.

Sarah: I'm interested in how that moment played out. Did you talk to him about why it's considered art, and do you remember what you said, he said?
I don't mean to put you on the spot, I just think kids are interesting people.

Merritt: i wish i remembered. i loved the fact that he didn't care that so many people obviously did think it was art.

Sarah: Haha

Merritt: that he still felt free to think it was lame.

Sarah: Good! That is everyone's right.
I love it.

[continue]

Aspen Public Radio's First Draft

by Mitzi Rapkin

Merritt Tierce was born and raised in Texas. She worked in various secretarial and retail positions until 2009, when she moved to Iowa City to attend the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as the Meta Rosenberg Fellow. After graduating in 2011 with her MFA from Iowa, she received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, and she is a 2013 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Author. Merritt’s first published story, Suck It, was selected by ZZ Packer to be anthologized in the 2008 edition of New Stories from the South, and her first book, Love Me Back, was published by Doubleday in 2014, to wide acclaim. Merritt lives near Dallas with her husband and children. www.merritttierce.com More about First Draft at aspenpublicradio.org/programs/first-draft

A Writer Grows Up

Dallas Observer 

by Lauren Smart

The Dallas Observer's annual Masterminds awards recognize local arts & culture visionaries with a cash prize presented at Artopia, a party with a fashion show, live music, artists' booths, and installations by each Mastermind.

MT: I think like a lot of writers early in their careers, you just expect that it will never happen because that seems like the most logical thing, Tierce says. It's been fucking fantastic. Just to have strangers read your book and think about it so hard and appreciate the things you love about it is amazing. [continue]

photograph by Can Turkyilmaz

photograph by Can Turkyilmaz

On Her Path to Becoming a Writer

The Advocate

by Rachel Stone

MT: I just wanted to write what I wanted to write. I didn’t want to write for anyone else. So instead of doing things to make it as a writer, I tried to make money. I’m really glad I did it that way now. I wasn’t writing toward anything for a long time. I just was living, really. [continue]

photograph by Danny Fulgencio

photograph by Danny Fulgencio

On Losing Her Religion

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

by Catherine Mallette

MT: That's when everything started to break down, for me. I felt like I could handle the belittlement and subjugation and discrimination myself, but I resisted absolutely the part where I was supposed to begin indoctrinating my children to believe any of it. [continue]

A Novel That Will Make You Gasp

B&N Reads

by Emma Chastain

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]

Sex, Drugs & Fine Dining

KERA's Art & Seek

by Anne Bothwell

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]

Freedom to Fuck Up

The Paris Review

by Thessaly La Force

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]

 

Fiery Appetites

Guernica

by Dwyer Murphy

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

photograph by Kael Alford

Abortion Rights Groups Say It's Time to Stop Playing Defense

NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday

by Kathy Lohr

"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]