Piper Eressea Kerman (born September 28, 1969) is an American memoirist convicted of felony money-laundering charges; her memoir Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison about her experiences in prison was adapted into the critically acclaimed Netflix original comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black.Kerman was born in Boston into a family with many attorneys, doctors, and educators. She graduated from Swampscott High School in Swampscott, Massachusetts in 1987, and Smith College in 1992. She is a self-described WASP (although her paternal grandfather was Russian Jewish). Wikipedia