
Melissa Gira Grant is a staff writer covering justice at The New Republic. She is the author of Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work (Verso). She was a senior staff writer at The Appeal, as well as a contributing writer at the Village Voice and Pacific Standard. Her feature reporting has been published by BuzzFeed News and the Guardian, and her commentary and criticism has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Bookforum and The New York Review of Books. Her essays are collected in Best Sex Writing, The Feminist Utopia Project, and Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo. She lives in New York.
Featured Work

Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work
Her latest book Playing the Whore dismantles pervasive myths about sex work, while criticizing both conditions within the sex industry and its criminalization.

Journalism
Feature reporting and criticism, from criminal justice to sexual politics.
About Her Work
Recent Work
The Appeal: Louisiana Strip Club Dancers Fear More Crackdowns As “Anti-Trafficking” Law Goes Into Effect
Friday, December 21, 2018
“What is happening is almost exactly as I predicted it,” said Lyn Archer, a dancer and organizer in New Orleans. ATC is taking a leading role in policing strip clubs, and Archer sees their enforcement methods as proof the agency wants more clubs to close and more dancers out of work. “They know that we don’t believe our work should be a crime, and they do believe that it should be,” Archer told The Appeal.
The Appeal: In “Amazing” Verdict, Jury Awards Transgender Woman Punitive Damages Against Suffolk County Jail
Friday, December 07, 2018
When Jessica Sunderland was incarcerated in Riverside Correctional Facility in Suffolk County, New York, she expected to continue the hormone treatment that her physician had prescribed. But Sunderland, a 32-year-old Iraq War veteran convicted of burglary in 2013, got nothing but excuses over the 16 months she was at the jail: They were waiting for her medical records, or they needed to consult outside experts. Without hormones, Sunderland was essentially forced to detransition.