Merle Harton is a Quaker Christian writer, educator, and peace advocate—a "follower of the Way, which they call a sect" (Acts 24:14).

His nonfiction publications include works for historical and technical book and monograph audiences, in addition to scholarly essays and critical trade-book and software reviews.  His shorter nonfiction has appeared in BookScapes, the Jacksonville Business Journal, Computer Shopper, The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography, inCider Magazine, Inside Technology Training, Orlando Sentinel, Philosophical Quarterly, Tulane Medicine, and elsewhere.  He is also co-author of the historical study Signor Faranta's Iron Theatre (New Orleans, 1982).

His experimental fiction has appeared in little press publications such as Back Porch, Paper Dance News, Satire, 69 Flavors of Paranoia, and elsewhere.  His first fiction collection, The Man Who Rowed Lake Pontchartrain and Other Stories, appeared in 2004. His new short-fiction collection, Twelve Stories from New Orleans [ISBN 978-0982430200] is now available from De Signis Press and from your favorite bookseller.

He received an honors B.A. in religious studies from the University of South Florida and both his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in philosophy from McMaster University (Hamilton, Canada). He teaches philosophy at Edward Waters College, a private historically black college affiliated with the AME Church, in downtown Jacksonville, Florida; he also teaches in the humanities at New York's Herkimer County Community College, a unit of SUNY.  Merle is an evangelical Quaker Christian, in unity with Friends United Meeting (FUM).

Merle writes from Florida and central upstate New York. He is single (divorced) with four children and now five grandchildren. He is an avid surfer, cyclist, weight trainer, and a 2nd-degree black belt in Taekwondo; he can also be found at the range practicing with his Beretta PX4 Storm 9mm.