Formerly a longtime sex educator at Babeland and one of the coproducers of New York’s famous sex and BDSM play party, Submit, this Brooklyn femme currently lives in Portland, Oregon, where she is an ASL interpreter, a Queer Jewish event host, and a performance artist. Her one-ish woman shows include Felice Brutality, Jew Hungry?, Psycho Semitic, The Temporary Flesh, and The Possibility of Response, which have been produced at numerous theaters and festivals in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Toronto, Portland, and Baltimore. Her shows require her to hang—singing—from the ceiling and fist watermelons (somewhat akin to her life off the stage). Her essay is an excerpt from her first book, Brutal Affection: Playing with Rough Sex, which is coming soon, she promises.
SARAH SLOANE (SarahSloane.net) spends her time educating and writing about sexuality (both traditional and alternative), alternative relationships, and the lines of sex, gender, and politics. She has presented at some of the largest alt-sex events in the U.S. and overseas, as well as at sex-positive boutiques and to professional groups and universities. Her writing has been featured in various online publications, on her website, and in a few anthologies. You can find out more about her work and her upcoming events on her website.
MOLLENA (MO) WILLIAMS (mollena.com), “Delicate, Trembling Flower of Submission”©, is a New York City born and raised writer, leatherwoman, actress, BDSM educator, fat fetish model, and executive pervert. In the kink and leather communities, she identifies as a power slave who submits to only one. She is extremely honored to have served as International Ms. Leather 2010 and Ms. San Francisco Leather 2009. Mollena is a coalition partner and supporter of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom and a former board associate for the Folsom Street Fair, and she was featured on the Folsom poster for 2010.
Active in the leather and BDSM communities since 1996, she keeps it real all over North America and Europe, teaching on myriad BDSM, leather, and kinkcentric topics. She is deeply honored to have been nominated for the 21st Annual Pantheon of Leather’s Woman of the Year Award and the Northern California Regional Award. She is a founding member of San Francisco’s Crowded Fire Theater Company, and she writes a blog called The Perverted Negress. Mo is the author of The Toybag Guide to Playing with Taboo and coauthor, with Lee Harrington, of the forthcoming book Playing Well with Others. She has been featured in many interviews and has written dozens of articles, including “BDSM and Playing with Race,” which appears in Best Sex Writing 2010.
LOLITA WOLF (leatheryenta.com) is a native New Yorker who discovered the BDSM scene back in the late 80s when “online” meant being on the phone sex lines. She is an activist who defends the sexual freedom of all consenting adults, spreads the word about BDSM, sex, and poly, and helps the community grow and flourish. Yet her goal remains to have fun. Lolita’s many specialties include bondage, sensation and impact play of all sorts, poly relationships, and social skills. She has taught for organizations across the country, including TES, GMSMA, Black Rose, Living in Leather, South Plains Leatherfest, Thunder in the Mountains, Portland Kinkfest, Frolicon, Dark Odyssey, and many others, and she has presented seminars at Columbia, Yale, NYU, The New School, Bard, and Rutgers. Lolita is an emeritus board member of the Leather Leadership Conference and The Eulenspiegel Society (TES). She is a former Chair of Lesbian Sex Mafia, an honorary member of GMSMA, and an associate member of New York boys of Leather. She is active with the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom and Leather Pride Night.
Lolita is the author of Spanking and CBT in a Nutshell. Her writing has appeared in On Our Backs, Prometheus, and The Lust Chronicles. Recently, she was featured in the New York Times’s “One in 8 Million” series. A six-year-old Princess who lies about her age, Lolita manages to stir up shit and get her own way (mostly). She is part of a far-ranging leather family and considers herself a versatile opportunist.
MADISON YOUNG (feministporn.net) is an international award-winning feminist porn star, director, gallerist, artist, and new mom. She has been called a “sex-positive Tasmanian devil.” She has been directing and performing in erotic films for nearly a decade and has won great acclaim for her video line, Madison Young Productions, and her network of erotic websites, the Feminist Porn Network. Her films have screened at film festivals through out the States, Europe, and Australia. Young values sexual education in her work and has taught workshops and lectures and served as a panelist on the topics of sexuality, feminist pornography, and kink across the U.S., including at Yale University and UC Berkeley. She has recently finished a memoir, Breathe: The Sexual Evolution of Madison Young, based on her experiences in the adult industry, due out in spring 2012.
Madison has contributed writing to Baby Remember My Name, edited by Michelle Tea, Rope Bondage and Power Exchange, edited by Lee Harrington, and In-Soumises, edited by Wendy Delorme. She has been featured in numerous documentaries including Virginie Despentes’s Mutantes: Femi-nisme PornoPunk and has been featured on the Independent Film Channel, Spike TV, The History Channel, LOGO, MTV, and on HBO’s Real Sex. When she isn’t documenting hot sex on film, she is running her own nonprofit community art gallery in San Francisco, Femina Potens Art Gallery, which focuses on the expression of art, sex, and gender. Ms. Young resides in San Francisco with her partner and Dominant, James Mogul, and their daughter, Emma.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
KATIE DIAMOND (katiediamond.com) is a radical queer comic artist and graphic designer. She graduated from the Maine College of Art with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration, where she got the nickname “Megaphone” because of her extensive community activism. She strongly believes in the direct crossover of art and politics, and uses this dogma in her everyday art practice. She has created many illustrations and cartoons about gender, sexuality, and sex education, and has designed a multitude of promotional materials for various local organizations. She is the publisher and editor of the queer feminist sex magazine Salacious, and her comic collaboration with queer performer Johnny Blazes is featured in the Lambda Literary Award–winning anthology Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation. She was named International Ms. Bootblack in April 2011.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
TRISTAN TAORMINO (tristantaormino.com and puck-erup.com) is an award-winning author, columnist, editor, sex educator, and feminist pornographer. She is the author of seven books: Secrets of Great G-Spot Orgasms and Female Ejaculation, The Big Book of Sex Toys, The Anal Sex Position Guide, Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships, The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women, True Lust: Adventures in Sex, Porn and Perversion , and Down and Dirty Sex Secrets. She has edited 23 anthologies, including her latest, Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica, and was the founding series editor of 16 volumes of the Lambda Literary Award–winning anthology Best Lesbian Erotica. She runs Smart Ass Productions, and has directed and produced more than 20 adult films, from sex education to reality porn. She has written for a multitude of publications from Yale Journal of Law and Feminism to Penthouse, and is a former editor of On Our Backs and a former syndicated columnist for The Village Voice. She has appeared in hundreds of publications and on radio and television. She lectures at top colleges and universities and teaches sex and relationship workshops around the world. She lives with her partner and their dogs in upstate New York.