F155.
f/Lawless: Writing Queer Sex
Friday, February 9, 2024
10:35 am to 11:50 am
Writing queer sex has always been an act of power. In a new era of anti-trans and homophobic legislation, queer sex is resistance, subversion, imagination, celebration, style. bell hooks reminds us that “the queer self is at odds with everything around it” and must “invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.” In this panel, five writers read from their work and discuss specific ideological and craft choices that inform how they write queer intimacy.
Participants
Annie Liontas's novel, Let Me Explain You, was featured in the New York Times Book Review as Editor's Choice. Her nonfiction was chosen by Roxane Gay as Best of 2019. Sex with a Brain Injury, her memoir, is due out in 2024. She is a member of The Claw, a salon for women and genderqueer writers.
Asali Solomon is the author of two novels: The Days of Afrekete and Disgruntled, as well as the short story collection, Get Down. She teaches fiction writing and the literature of the African diaspora at Haverford College.
Melissa Febos is the bestselling author of four books, including Girlhood, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative. An NEA and Guggenheim fellow, she is a professor at the University of Iowa.
Jeanne Thornton is the author of Summer Fun, The Dream of Doctor Bantam, and The Black Emerald, as well as the coeditor, with Tara Madison Avery, of We're Still Here: An All-Trans Comics Anthology, and the copublisher of Instar Books (www.instarbooks.com). She lives in Brooklyn. jeannethornton.com
Lydia Conklin has received a Stegner Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, three Pushcart Prizes, and a Creative Writing Fulbright in Poland. They are an assistant professor of fiction at Vanderbilt. Their book Rainbow Rainbow was published by Catapult in May 2022.
