Melissa Gira Grant

Melissa Gira Grant was born in Boston, Massachusetts.^[2] She attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst and at San Francisco State University.^[3][4]

Grant is a former sex worker^[5][6] who began sex work to pay for being a writer.^[2]

Grant was a member of the Exotic Dancers Union^[7] and a board member at the Lusty Lady Theater in San Francisco.^{[citation needed]} Grant worked at St. James Infirmary Clinic in San Francisco from 2006 to 2009.^{[citation needed]} Later she was on the staff of Third Wave Foundation, a social justice and feminist foundation in New York.^{[citation needed]}

Grant’s writing covers the intersection of sex, politics, and technology. She is the author of Playing the Whore (2014) published by Verso and a staff writer at The New Republic.^[8] She previously worked as a contributing writer for Pacific Standard, Village Voice, a reporter at Valleywag and a contributing editor at Jacobin.^[9] Grant also has written for the Appeal, the Nation, Pacific Standard, the Village Voice,^[10] the Atlantic, Wired, the Guardian, Reason, Glamour, Slate, Jezebel, Rhizome, AlterNet, In These Times, Valleywag and $pread.^[11]

As editor

• O'Connell, Meaghan; Grant, Melissa Gira, eds. (2010). Coming and Crying. Glass Houses Press. ISBN 978-0615384948.

As author

• Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work. Verso. 2014. ISBN 978-1781683231.