Mark Merlis

Mark Merlis (March 9, 1950 – August 15, 2017^[1]) was an American writer and health policy analyst.^[2][3]

Born in Framingham, Massachusetts on March 9, 1950 and raised in Baltimore, Maryland,^[2] Merlis attended Wesleyan University and Brown University.^[2] He subsequently took a job with the Maryland Department of Health to support himself while writing.^[2] In 1987, he took a job with the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress as a social legislation specialist, and was involved in the creation of the Ryan White Care Act.^[2]

Beginning in the 1990s, Merlis published a series of novels.^[2] His first novel, American Studies, was published in 1994^[4] and won the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Literature and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction in 1995,^[3] and his second, An Arrow's Flight, was published in 1998^[5] and won the 1999 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction.^[3] He published two further novels during his lifetime, Man About Town in 2003^[6] and JD in 2015.^[7][8]

Merlis lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and worked both as an author and an independent health policy consultant.^[3]

Merlis died on August 15, 2017, at the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, from pneumonia associated with ALS.^[1] He was sixty-seven years old. He is survived by his husband of many years, Robert Ashe.^[3]

• American Studies (1994)
• An Arrow's Flight (1998) - also published as Pyrrhus (1999)
• Man About Town (2003)
• JD (2015)

• Mark Merlis