The Burning Pen: Sex Writers on Sex Writing - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1555836151 ISBN 13: 9781555836153

Publisher: Alyson Books, 2000

Synopsis

In this groundbreaking work, contemporary writers of erotica reflect on how their work originates, how their sexuality shapes their words, and, more important, how their words have affected their sexuality. Patrick Califia-Rice, Fack Fritscher, Cecilia Tan, Thomas Roche, Carol Queen, Felice Picano, Shar Rednour, Laura Antoniou, and Simon Sheppard are just a scattering of the names brought together by noted erotica writer M. Christian to deliver an eye-opening, thought-provoking examination of the craft of writing about sex, which includes each writer's favorite erotic story as an illustration of this group's diverse approach to sexuality and language.

M. Christian is the author of Dirty Words , Eros Ex Machina, Midsummer Night's Dreams, and Guilty Pleasures, and the editor (with Simon Sheppard) of Rough Stuff.

About this title

Review:

Erotica takes another sauntering, spike-heeled step toward the literary mainstream with this anthology of stories by some of the best-known sex writers in America, each paired with a memoir or personal commentary on the work. The editor's introduction can be skipped, but the rest of the book should intrigue devotees of this developing genre, especially those who wonder about the relationship between writers' sex lives or desires and the stories they write. In "Porno, Ergo Sum," for example, Jack Fritscher confesses that he breathes in experience and exhales fiction. In "Screaming Underwater," Lucy Taylor describes her attempt to merge the erotic and the spiritual. And Carol Queen, in an introduction to pages from The Leather Daddy and the Femme, provides perhaps the most articulate--and politically explicit--piece of writing in the book, a defense of her reputation as "Rebecca of Sunnyf**k Farm." Cecilia Tan may say it best, however, in the memoir that accompanies her early story, "Telepaths Don't Need Safewords": "Writing is identity and loss of identity at the same time." You may learn something here about the personalities of the writers included, but there is really no explaining the ways that fiction moves us, or the reasons writers write. --Regina Marler

About the Author:

For the last decade M.Christian has proven himself to be a true literary chameleon, establishing himself as a master of multi-orientation erotica with stories in such anthologies as Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, and so on and so forth as well as with the collections Dirty Words, Speaking Parts, The Bachelor Machine, and Filthy.

About this edition

• Publisher: Alyson Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1555836151
• ISBN 13: 9781555836153
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264
• Editor: Christian M.