Born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas in 1966, and educated at the Arkansas School for the Blind in Little Rock, Constance Merritt is the author of three collections of poems: A Protocol for Touch (University of North Texas Press, 2000), Blessings and Inclemencies (Louisiana State University Press, 2007), and Two Rooms (Louisiana State University Press, 2009). From 2003 to 2005 she served as the Margaret Banister Writer-in-Residence at Sweet Briar College. She lives in Louisville, KY.

Two Rooms, poems (Louisiana State University Press, 2009), Blessings and Inclemencies (Louisiana State University Press, 2007), A Protocol for Touch (University of North Texas Press, 2000)

Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry (W. W. Norton & Company, 2013), American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2000)

Callaloo, Ploughshares, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, The New Yorker, Women's Review of Books