F180.
The Importance of Pleasure: Representations of Sex & the Body in Pleasure
Friday, March 25, 2022
12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
Writing about the body experiencing sensual pleasure—especially female-identifying and queer bodies—is often outweighed by writing featuring the body-shamed and sexually traumatized. This panel is shaped by questions centered on the comparative absence of pleasure on the page. As practicing writers whose work, in varied ways, celebrates the body, the panelists will discuss the importance of representations of pleasure and offer craft practices they employ when writing the sensual and sexual.
Participants
Angie Dell is a queer, nonbinary writer, printer, and book artist. They worked for many years as a sex worker and pleasure-based sex educator and are currently the associate director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and the proprietor of Shut Eye Press.
Jenny Irish is the author of the hybrid poetry collection Common Ancestor and the short story collection I Am Faithful. She teaches creative writing at Arizona State University.
K-Ming Chang is a Kundiman fellow, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. She is the author of the New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice novel Bestiary and the forthcoming short story collection Gods of Want.
Taylor Byas is a third-year PhD student at the University of Cincinnati and an assistant features editor for the Rumpus. She won both the 2020 Poetry Super Highway and Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets contests. She is the author of Bloodwarm (2021) and is represented by the Deborah Harris Agency.
Jessica Q. Stark is the author of Savage Pageant, which was named one of the Best Books of 2020 in the Boston Globe and in Hyperallergic. Her work appears in Pleiades and Verse, and she is a poetry editor for AGNI and the comics editor for Honey Literary.
