Aug 252012
 

 

This Friday, August 31, Sex Out Loud welcomes author and scholar Hanne Blank. We’ll discuss her work on the history of both heterosexuality and virginity. Blank will talk about the 20th century invention of the concept of “straight” and why everything you think you know about virginity is wrong. Blank is also the author of Big Big Love: A Sex and Relationships Guide for People of Size (and Those Who Love Them), updated, illustrated, and re-released in 2011, so we’ll discuss radical acceptance of bodies and how it relates to bettering all of our sex and relationships. This show will be LIVE, so be ready to call in with your questions and join the discussion at 866-472-5788.

Hanne Blank spends her time thinking, learning, writing, and speaking at the crossroads of bodies, self, and culture. Joyfully spanning the town/gown divide as well as the mind/body split, her books include the histories Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality (Beacon Press, 2012) and Virgin: The Untouched History (Bloomsbury, 2007), the cult classic sex and body-acceptance book Big Big Love: A Sex and Relationships Guide for People of Size (and Those Who Love Them) (Celestial Arts, 2011), and numerous others.

Hanne’s work has been featured in periodicals ranging from Penthouse to Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, and in anthologies ranging from Embodied Resistance: Challenging the Norms, Breaking The Rules to Fucking Daphne: Mostly True Stories and Fictions to Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape.

A former Scholar of the Institute for Teaching and Research on Women at Towson University, Hanne has taught in various capacities on campuses including Brandeis and Tufts. She is also a popular speaker and guest lecturer, with appearances ranging from Harvard University to the inaugural Femme Conference and on topics from the history of the hymen to the politics of getting on top.

Hanne divides her time between north-central Massachusetts and Atlanta. She is a passionate defender of the Oxford comma, is a tea and cider drinker who lives in a coffee and beer country, and owns a preposterous number of red lipsticks. Her current projects include books on MFK Fisher, the rights of human bodies, and the thoroughly gory history of gynecology, as well as teaching and lecturing on campuses all over.

Aug 192012
 

 

This Friday, August 24th, I’m thrilled to welcome Jessica Valenti, writer and founder of feministing.com to Sex Out Loud. Jessica Valenti will talk to us about her latest book, The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women, which was also turned into a documentary. We’ll discuss abstinence-only education, recent attempts by legislators to control women’s reproductive health care, and long term effects of the current climate on women and sexuality. I will also talk with Jessica, author of Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters, about her experiences as a feminist writer and activist, and where she thinks the next generation of online organizing will lead us. Tune into our show at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT.

Jessica Valenti – called one of the Top 100 Inspiring Women in the world by The Guardian – is the author of three books: Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters, He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut…and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know, and The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women which has been made into a documentary by the Media Education Foundation. She is the editor of the anthology Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, which was named one of Publishers Weekly‘s Top 100 Books of 2009.

Jessica is also the founder of Feministing.com, which Columbia Journalism Review calls “head and shoulders above almost any writing on women’s issues in mainstream media.” Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian (UK), The American Prospect, Ms. magazine, Salon and Bitch magazine. She has won a Choice USA Generation award and the 2011 Hillman Journalism Prize for her work with Feministing. She has appeared on The Colbert Report and the Today show, among others, and was profiled in The New York Times Magazine under the headline “Fourth Wave Feminism.”

Jessica is also a widely sought-after speaker who gives dozens of speeches at universities and organizations in the U.S. and abroad. She received her Masters degree in Women’s and Gender Studies from Rutgers University.

Aug 152012
 

This Friday, Sex Out Loud will be coming to you LIVE from LA! I’m talking to adult film stars Danny Wylde and Lily LaBeau about what it’s like to be performers in a relationship. They’ll reveal the best part of dating another porn star, what they fight about, and the difference between sex on screen and off screen. I will ask them about monogamy, their favorite directors, interacting with fans, and what they think about the recent condom mandate in LA. Plus, we’ll hear about their latest venture together: HotelLaBeau.com.

Lily Labeau is an AVN-nominated actress and model named “Next Star of the Year” by CAVR. She is the creative force behind LilyLuvs.com, InsideLilyLaBeau.com, and soon, HotelLaBeau.com. Danny Wylde is a pornographer, writer, musician, and filmmaker living in Los Angeles, California.

Aug 062012
 

Photo by Don Sir Photography

Mollena Williams – our guest for this Friday’s episode of Sex Out Loud – is simply one of the most intelligent and articulate BDSM educators of her generation, and we get to spend the entire hour picking her perverted brain! We will talk about the two chapters on roleplay she wrote for my book The Ultimate Guide to Kink: BDSM, Role Play and the Erotic Edge. She’ll explain the complex elements of race play, where kinky people play out racist scenarios, use racial epithets, or eroticize racial power dynamics. Mollena will reveal why she is turned on by this controversial kink and other kinds of taboo fantasies. Plus, I’ll ask her about what it’s like to be a woman of color who enjoys being a submissive and a collared slave. Read all about Mollena Williams below, including a list of appearances in the next few months.

This “Delicate, Trembling Flower of Submission” © is a NYC born and raised writer, actress, BDSM Educator, Storyteller and an Award-Winning Executive Pervert. She is extremely proud to have served as International Ms Leather 2010. She is also thrilled to have been named Ms. San Francisco Leather 2009 after that contest’s decade long slumber.

She is deeply honored and profoundly humbled to have been selected to receive the 2012 Jack McGeorge Award for Excellence in Education by Black Rose, and is thrilled to have won the National Leather Association’s 2012 Cynthia Slater Non-Fiction Article Award. She was a finalist for the 21st annual Pantheon of Leather’s Woman of the Year & Northern California Regional Awards. You can watch her being interviewed for the Women’s Leather History Project, as curated by the Leather Archives and Museum.

Her latest project, co-authored with Lee Harrington, “Playing Well With Others: Your Guide to Discovering, Exploring and Navigating the Kink, Leather and BDSM Communities” hits the streets September 1, 2012. She is the author of the “Toybag Gude: Taboo Play.” Her essays appear in 2 anthologies curated by Rachel Kramer Bussel: “BDSM and Race Play” appears in “Best Sex Writing 2010,” (you can read the Jezebel review here!) and “Kiss my Boots” is featured in “The Lust Chronicles.” Her challenging essay on “race play” is featured in“Spirit of Desire: Personal Journeys in Sacred Kink” edited by Lee Harrington. Not one but two essays commissioned by Tristan Taormino appear in the groundbreaking anthology “The Ultimate Guide to Kinky Sex.” Mollena is pleased and delighted to be a featured educator with The Kink Academy, where you can see clips of her speaking on various and sundry topics! She is also a columnist for SexIs Magazine, where she lets loose twice a month on just about anything.

Exploring kink since 1993, active in BDSM and the Leather Community since 1996, and presenting classes since 1998, she speaks at Leather, BDSM and Kink events across the US, Europe and Canada on many Leather and BDSM focused topics. She also brings the knowledge on Kink, BDSM and Leather to such august institutions of higher learning as SF State and Cal State, Harvard, Princeton,Yale, Stamford, and Brown for IvyQ. She has been invited to present this fall for MIT.

Mollena’s been sober since 3-14-2007 and in December that same year, she founded “Safeword,” a 12-step based recovery group for all kinksters seeking recovery from addiction.

International Ms Leather 2010 was truly an international title year with visits to the Pride Festival in Stockholm, Sweden, where she made history as the first Leatherwoman ever invited to march with the venerable Scandinavian Leathermen’s Association! She’s also done her thing in Dublin, Ireland, Berlin, Germany, the UK: toured Amsterdam, Netherlands for Leather Pride, as well as teaching and performing in Vancouver, Canada. A roll-up of her epic IMsL 2010 title year can be found here!

Her background includes a lifetime of training and involvement in the performing arts, which include spoken word, classical theater, dance, performance art, and all manner of stagecraft. Performing professionally since the age of 5, her credits include singing on the soundtrack for the movie The Wiz and co-starring with Danny Bonaduce in the underground cult-classic America’s Deadliest Home Video. Her first solo show,69Stories: One Pervert’s Tale has been re-revived and was a hit in Vancouver BC in November 2010 and Madison, Wisconsin July 2012. You can see an excerpt from it here (“Kiss My Boots” part One, and Part Two) as performed at Rachel Kramer Bussel’s In the Flesh storytelling series. She is a favorite at Dixie De La Tour’s Bawdy Storytelling, has performed for many storytelling venues including Bare! Stories, Tiny, Dangerous Fun Audacia Ray’s Red Umbrella Diaries, Carol Queen’s Perverts Put Out, and was a guest on Kevin Allison’s Risk! Podcast. She has also thrown down onstage for Porchlight Storytelling and is looking forward to an upcoming appearance on NPR’s Snap Judgement.

As a model, Mollena has been featured on the Folsom Street Fair 2010 Poster, as well as modeling for Stormy Leather. She has worked with many well-known and renowned kink, Leather and fetish photographers, including Stacie Joy, Laren Leland, Aeric Meredith-Goujon, Melvin Moten, Don Sir and Michele Serchuk: who’s photograph of Mollena posing with fellow educator Graydancer was featured in the Seattle Erotic Arts Festival 2010.

She is chuffed to have been interviewed for the Leather Archives & Museum’s Women’s Leather History Project. Recent interviews with Mo can be found on Jezebel and on Princeton University’s Equal Writes website. You can also read her 2010 interview with SexisIs Magazine. She was featured in a groundbreaking interview at TheGrio.com on BDSM and race, and also interviewed by Sharon Glassman for the Huffington Post. Her work’s also been published by the Society Of Janus Newsletter, The Eulenspiegel Society’s magazine, Prometheus, as well as the online magazine at ALT.COM and Bondage.com. She has been interviewed for The Bottoming Book, ColorLines Magazine, Bitch Magazine, Abiola Abrams: Love, Sex & Dasting, The Playboy Advisor, Sexploration with Monika and The Reverend Mel Show, SexIs Magazine, The Huffington Post, Jezebel and Racialicious to name a few! She is featured in the award winning documentary “Vice & Consent”. You can also see her all tied up in the instructional video, “Jay Wiseman Teaches Rope Bondage”

A founding member of Crowded Fire Theater Company, and former co-host of San Francisco’s Queer Open Mic, Mo blogs on http://mollena.com. Her blog, The Perverted Negress, has been a featured blog on Fleshbot (not Once but TWICE!) as well as the pick of the week for The Sugasm. And boy howdy, the venerated Jane’s Guide thinks The Perverted Negress’ Blog is pretty rad! Mollena is also a member of Mama’s Leather Family (#1231) , formally dubbed “Mama’s Perverted Negress” and pinned in at the SF Eagle by Mama Sandy Reinhardt herself. She Twitters incessantly over on http://twitter.com/mollena, so follow her there!

UPCOMING APPEARANCES:

August 16th through August 22nd: Boston, MA
  • 8/16 Video shoot with Kink Academy
  • 8/17 Class for New England Leather Alliance
  • 8/18 “Boundary Smackdowns” class for MOB
  • 8/19 “Never A ‘Bad’ Scene!” class for MOB
  • 8/22 “Taboo Play” class for NELA

August 23rd – August 30th: NYC

  • 8/24 Shoot promo on “Playing Well With Others” for Kink Academy
  • 8/26 Shoot for “New Shibari You Can Use” book with Lee Harrington
  • 8/28 Performing at The Inspired Word (real story on kink)
  • 8/29 LIGALY Center Leather Education and STD Testing Event (Presenting “Playing Well With Others” class and discussing STD testing)
  • 8/30 Shoot for film project with Aeric Meredith-Goujon (BDSM themed short film project for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts)

August 31st – September 2nd: Maryland

September 3rd – September 6th – New York, NY

  • 9/5 Work with Aeric on editing the YBCA Film Project

September 7th Through September 26th: Bay Area, CA

  • 9/8 Storytelling, Pleasant Hill
  • 9/10 “The Shout!” True Storytelling, Oakland
  • 9/11 Class for Good Vibrations, San Francisco
  • 9/12 Bawdy Storytelling, San Francisco
  • 9/13 Performance Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
  • 9/18 “Bedtime Stories with Mollena” performance, San Francisco
  • 9/23 Folsom Street Fair

September 27th – October 4th: New York, NY

  • 10/1”The Worst!” True storytelling

October 5th through October 8th, Washington DC

  • Black Rose
Jul 302012
 

This Friday on Sex Out Loud, I talk to writer, media maker, and crusader for people in the sex industry Audacia Ray about her role in the sex workers’ rights movement. We’ll discuss the work she does with the Red Umbrella Project, an organization she founded and directs as well as her thoughts on strategies for increasing awareness of the myriad issues facing sex workers. Plus, she’ll address her controversial remarks at this year’s Momentum Conference, and tell is why she no longer identifies as a sex-positive feminist. This will be a live show, so be ready to join in the conversation online and call in with questions!

Audacia Ray is the founder and director of the Red Umbrella Project, where she works to amplify the voices of people involved in the sex industry. At the Red Umbrella Project, Audacia hosts monthly live storytelling events and a weekly podcast, leads media and storytelling workshops, and provides communications support and leadership for individuals and communities who wish to tell their stories and reframe public debate. In 2010, the Village Voice named the Red Umbrella Diaries series and Audacia’s blog Waking Vixen to their Best of NYC list. As the Program Officer for Online Communications and Campaigns at the International Women’s Health Coalition and a communications consultant for the Global Network of Sex Work Projects, Audacia has worked with activists all over the world to build communications strategies around challenging topics like youth sexual health, sexual rights, HIV, and sex work.

Her skills are rooted in years of experience as an activist, writer, and media maker. Audacia is a former sex worker who was an executive editor at the Utne Reader award-winning $pread magazine for three years and is the author of Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration. She has been blogging about sexuality and culture since 2004, and has shot and edited a variety of videos and video podcasts, including Naked City TV, a twenty-two episode documentary video show that she produced for the Village Voice in 2008. Audacia also developed a syllabus and taught as an adjunct professor of Human Sexuality at Rutgers University for three semesters. She has a BA from Eugene Lang College at the New School and a MA from Columbia University.

Jul 232012
 

This week on Sex Out LoudAVN’s 2012 Female Performer of the Year Bobbi Starr joins us to talk about her love of the oboe, her award winning performances in movies like Belladonna: No Warning 4, directing her own line of films for Evil Angel, why she loves to push sexual boundaries, and where she sees herself in relation to the feminist porn movement. She gives us the scoop on creating ElectroSluts.com, what kinky sex does for her, and why electricity play is so hot. We’ll also get her take on the current controversy around mandating condom use for all porn performers in California. Plus, pro-BDSM sex-positive feminist activist, blogger, and author Clarisse Thorn discusses her new book The S&M Feminist. She’ll breakdown BDSM, women’s submissive fantasies, and the tensions between kink and feminism. Plus, she’ll give us a glimpse of her years spent researching pick up artists (like those in Neil Strauss’s bestselling book The Game and VH1’s hit reality show The Pick-Up Artist), which became the basis for her book Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser.

Bobbi Starr is a very hardcore kind of performer and director. Her scenes have been shot for gonzo companies like Evil Angel, Jules Jordan Video and Red Light District and she won AVN Awards for Most Outrageous Sex Scene and Best Double Penetration Sex Scene as well as an XRCO Award for Most Orgasmic Oralist and two consecutive wins for Superslut. You may have seen her on Kink.com’s websites in many of their scenes, and she’s also in demand in Europe, having received an AVN nomination for Best Sex Scene in a Foreign-Shot Production for “Into the Dark” from Daring Media Group and a coveted Hot d’Or nomination for Female American Performer of the Year. She’s also a former nationally ranked swimmer and a trained professional concert oboist. Follow her on Twitter @BobbiStarr

Clarisse Thorn is a feminist, sex-positive educator who has delivered sexuality workshops and lectures to a variety of audiences, including museums and universities across the USA. In 2009, she created and curated the ongoing Sex+++ sex-positive documentary film series at Chicago’s historic feminist site, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum. In 2010, she returned to the USA after working on HIV mitigation in southern Africa. She has also volunteered as an archivist, curator and fundraiser for that venerable S&M institution, the Leather Archives & Museum. Clarisse’s writing has appeared across the Internet in places like The Guardian, AlterNet, Feministe, Jezebel, The Good Men Project, Role/Reboot, and Time Out Chicago. Follow her on Twitter @ClarisseThorn

Jul 162012
 

This Friday, July 20th, on Sex Out Loud, I’m happy to welcome educator, filmmaker, and pop culture icon Buck Angel. We’ll discuss changing representations of trans male sexuality, including the making of his docu-porn Sexing the Transman and its success on the film festival circuit. Buck will also discuss the upcoming sequel, Sexing the Transman 2, due later this month and his transition from being an adult film star to a speaker and educator. I will also get a chance to talk to Tobi Hill-Meyer, a filmmaker currently working on Doing It Again, an erotic documentary about trans women’s sexuality that weaves together explicit scenes and interviews with trans women and their partners.

Buck Angel

As a visionary filmmaker, activist, educator and lecturer, Buck Angel launched Buck Angel Entertainment as a vehicle to produce multi media projects that will motivate viewers to think outside the box. Buck Angel’s message of empowerment through self-acceptance and being sexually comfortable in your own skin has struck a passionate chord with folks all over the world. Since Buck coined “it’s not what’s between your legs that defines your gender!”, the phrase has become an anthem for people everywhere who have been inspired by this message of self acceptance. Buck has been featured in nearly every imaginable international media outlet: television, radio, web, and print. Buck Angel made history when he received the prestigious award from Adult Video News (AVN) for Transsexual Performer of the Year in 2007 for his groundbreaking work in the adult entertainment industry. Buck has received international recognition and continues to be a huge box office hit in numerous markets.

Tobi Hill-Meyer

In 2010 Tobi Hill-Meyer made her film making debut, winning an Award for Emerging Filmmaker of the year and being named #3 in Velvet Park Media’s list of the 25 Most Significant Queer Women of 2010. She is a multiracial trans woman with a long history of working with feminist and LGBTQ organizations on a local, state, and federal level, having served on several boards and offering support as a strategic consultant. Since receiving her degree in Sociology and Women and Gender Studies, Tobi has turned her focus to media analysis and productions. She is a founding member and major contributor to the media collective, Handbasket Productions. Handbasket Productions is a radical, oppression aware media collective focusing on queer culture, trans experience and sex positivity. Spanning non-fiction, fiction, and fantasy genres, we use books zines, film, music and other art to cover a variety of topics including sex work, polyamory, racism and queerspawn experience.

Jul 132012
 

 

Tonight I’m excited that The Mayhems are able to join us on Sex Out Loud! Here’s some info about them before we go live at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT. (Don’t forget you can listen here.)

Meet The Mayhems
One day while shooting a couple’s scene for QueerPorn.TV, Maggie and Ned came to the sudden realization that there were no porn sites on the internet featuring real couples who both identified as queer switches. They were cautioned that viewers wouldn’t be able to handle a website where the content was unpredictable and especially warned that featuring footage of Ned having sex with women, men, and trans* performers would never sell because people weren’t ready for it. It was a challenge that they were prepared to face. Putting their mutual nerd chops to work, they built their website together from ground up as a 100% independent venture. In addition to challenging audiences with a couples website that was largely non-heteronormative, they have also included their own coverage of the Occupy movement, their challenges with credit card company censorship, and their exceptionally geeky experiments like the PSIgasm (Masters & Johnson in a wireless computer buttplug that detects quantitative data about the human arousal and orgasmic process in real time*). After being online for only 8 months they received a Feminist Porn Awards nomination and they are excited by the one year anniversary of MeetTheMayhems with no signs of slowing down yet.

Maggie Mayhem

When Maggie Mayhem started volunteering as an HIV test counselor at UC Santa Cruz in 2003, she had no idea how radically it would change the direction of her entire life. Before long, she became a vocal activist for harm reduction and sex positivity. She has served as the coordinator of the UC Santa Cruz Anonymous HIV testing program, HIV Senior Specialist of Larkin Street Youth Services, and grant recipient for HIV prevention and care work in Bagamoyo, Tanzania. Maggie Mayhem is also a writer, speaker, and performance artist as well as a queer porn performer who has appeared on Kink.Com, Crashpad Series, Madison Bound, Girlfriends Films, QueerPorn.TV, and on the website she built with her partner Ned, MeetTheMayhems.Com

Ned Mayhem

Ned Mayhem is a physics graduate student who has been a performer in straight, gay, and queer pornography since 2010. He has appeared in films that have been recognized at Cinekink, AVN, and Feminist Porn Awards. With his partner Maggie Mayhem, Ned runs the independent “DIY” porn site MeetTheMayhems.com showcasing the couple’s own brand of perversely heartwarming queer sexuality. Ned also uses the software he has developed for MeetTheMayhems to empower other adult performers and independent studios to control their own web presence and monetize their own content. In addition to MeetTheMayhems.com, Ned’s software runs such sites as Femifist.com, QueerlySF.com, and KittyStryker.com. Ned loves to share his pornographics enthusiasm with crowds, and he’s spoken at MomentumCon 2012, Sex Week at Harvard, Arse Elektronika, Hackmeet, Nerd Nite SF, and OpenSF.

 

 

Jul 012012
 

Performer and activist Ignacio Rivera joins me this Friday, July 6th at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET for a nuanced discussion about some highly charged subjects. Ignacio, who prefers the pronoun they, will talk about their gender identity and how it impacts their sexuality. We will discuss polyamory in people of color communities, race politics and racially-charged fantasies in the kink world, and how to create a truly inclusive, multi-racial community event. Then Ignacio will look at the challenges of their starring role in the feature film Mommy is Coming and reveal what it was like to work with acclaimed indie director Cheryl Dunye. This episode was recorded live during the OpenSF Conference in San Francisco and includes an audio excerpt of Ignacio’s co-keynote presentation with Yosenio Lewis.

Ignacio Rivera aka Papí Coxxx identifies as a Queer, Trans, Two-Spirit, polyamorous, kinky, Black-Boricua. Ignacio, who prefers the gender-neutral pronoun “they,” is a lecturer, activist, filmmaker, sex educator, sex worker, and performance artist, sharing spoken word, one-person shows, and storytelling internationally. Their work has appeared in ColorLines, Ebony, Yellow Medicine Review, The Ultimate Guide to Kink and in their chapbooks, Las Alas, co-authored by Maceo Cabrera Estévez; Ingridients; and Thoughts, Rants and What Some Might Call Poetry. Ignacio is the recipient of a Marsha A. Gómez Cultural Heritage Award from LLEGÓ: The National Latina/o Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Organization. Ignacio is one of the founding board members of Queers for Economic Justice; they are also the founder of Poly Patao Productions. Ignacio has been facilitating workshops, doing lectures and creating events for kinky, kinky-curious Queer/Trans POCs and their white queer and trans allies for over a decade.

Jun 252012
 

My guest on Sex Out Loud on Friday, June 29 at 5:00 pm Pacific time/8:00 pm Eastern time on the VoiceAmerica Talk Radio Network is Rachel Kramer Bussel – an author who has so far edited over 40 sexy collections, including the Best Sex Writing of 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012. Rachel and I will talk kinky erotica, BDSM, and sex writing, including the phenomenon of the 50 Shades trilogy. She’ll also discuss her latest book, Suite Encounters: Hotel Sex Stories. For this live show, Rachel has said absolutely NO topic is off limits, so be ready to call in with your most provocative questions and topics!

Rachel Kramer Bussel (rachelkramerbussel.com) is a New York–based author, editor and blogger. She has edited over forty books of erotica, including Anything for You: Erotica for Kinky Couples; Suite Encounters; Going Down; Irresistible; Gotta Have It; Obsessed; Women in Lust; Surrender; Orgasmic; Bottoms Up; Spanked: Red-Cheeked Erotica; Fast Girls; Smooth; Passion; The Mile High Club; Do Not Disturb; Going Down; Tasting Him; Tasting Her; Please, Sir; Please, Ma’am; He’s on Top; She’s on Top; Caught Looking; Hide and Seek; Crossdressing; Rubber Sex, and is Best Sex Writing and Best Bondage Erotica series editor. Her anthologies have won 8 IPPY (Independent Publisher) Awards, and Surrender won the National Leather Association Samois Anthology Award. Her work has been published in over one hundred anthologies, including Best American Erotica 2004 and 2006 and Zane’s Chocolate Flava 2 and Purple Panties. She wrote the popular “Lusty Lady” column for the Village Voice.

Rachel has written for Bust, The Daily Beast, The Frisky, Glamour, Gothamist, Huffington Post, Inked, Mediabistro, Newsday, The New York Observer, New York Post, Penthouse, The Root, Salon, San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out New York and Zink, among others. She hosted the popular In the Flesh Erotic Reading Series (inthefleshreadingseries.com), featuring readers from Susie Bright to Zane, and speaks at conferences, does readings and teaches erotic writing workshops across the country. She blogs at lustylady.blogspot.com and cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com.

And! For those folks near NYC, Rachel is conducting a free erotic writing workshop at 7 pm on July 25th at Babeland on Mercer Street in SoHo. RSVP here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3706442068