[3] Hamilton-Merritt was a professor at Southern Connecticut State University, where she taught writing and journalism for nearly two decades (1979–97) on a part-time basis.
[3] In 1997, she retired from teaching at Southern Connecticut State University, to work full-time for the resettlement of a group of Hmong living in a compound near Bangkok, Thailand.
Print articles, and repeated electronic archive research, from this period have not turned up under either of her names, raising questions as to when and how her Vietnam-War-era work was published.
In 1980, she wrote an early story in Reader’s Digest on reported chemical and biological warfare in communist Laos under the Marxist government.
[3] For her work to help bring awareness about the Hmong people's situation and their recent history, Hamilton-Merritt has reportedly been largely self-nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, which she did not receive.
Mr. Burke Marshall, of Yale Law School, reportedly wrote in support of her nomination: “They (the Hmong) are a people who have been deeply damaged and wronged by history and by the actions of great nations...”[3] Hamilton-Merritt was one of the editors of Indiana University's Vietnam War Era Classics Series.