Melissa Gira Grant (born 1978)^{[citation needed]} is an American journalist. She is a staff writer at The New Republic and the author of Playing the Whore (Verso, 2014), and co-editor of the ebook Coming and Crying (Glass Houses, 2010).^[1]

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]}

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.