Hear Me and Tristan Taormino Talk About Sex Writing and Her New Memoir
Plus my Erotica Writing 101 class is back on Saturday
I have two online events coming up I wanted to let you know about: This Saturday, September 9, 1-3 pm ET/10 am-noon PT I’m teaching my Erotica Writing 101 workshop on Zoom. It’s $25/person and won’t be recorded to protect attendees’ privacy. We’ll be diving into writing various erotic scenarios and discussing paths to publication, including traditional publishing and self-publishing, pseudonyms, and more. All registrants will receive my PowerPoint featuring dozens of writing prompts, a bibliography with resources and publisher listings, and sex scene writing tips. Can’t make it? Check out my nonfiction craft guide How to Write Erotica.
Then on Monday, September 11, from 6:30-8 pm ET/3:30-5 pm PT, I’ll be speaking via Zoom with the amazing Tristan Taormino about her moving, emotional, and sexually frank new memoir A Part of the Heart Can’t Be Eaten (click on the title to see the table of contents, which sets the perfect tone with chapter titles like “Slutty,” “Femme Is My Gender” and “Anal Sex Made Me”). The talk is FREE and open to all, you just have to register here. We’ll be discussing everything from the book to our days writing for The Village Voice to ethically writing about your sex life when it involves other people, the media landscape for sex writing, queer history, mental health, aging, and more. Plus you’ll have the chance to ask us questions during the Q&A!
And here’s some of what people have said about her memoir, which I highly recommend. It’s about Tristan’s family history, especially her relationship with her gay father, as well as her sexual coming of age and embracing her queer identity, and finding her life’s purpose as a sex writer and educator and porn director and embracing her sexuality and building sexual community. You can read excerpts here and here. Follow Tristan on Twitter and Instagram to keep up with her work.
“How fortunate we are to have such a passionate and skillful writer who has chosen to share with us her many wonderful and varied romantic relationships and sexual encounters, and the wisdom she’s accrued in the process. This is such a fun read!” — Kate Bornstein, author of Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us
“Tristan Taormino’s memoir is unabashedly, in-your-face, all-caps QUEER in the best way humanly possible. A Part of the Heart Can’t Be Eaten is honest, vulnerable, wise, and at parts, heartbreaking. But there is strength amidst the heartbreak, and Taormino’s message of queer acceptance and living without shame always shines through.” — Zachary Zane, author of Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto
“A stunningly beautiful memoir spilling the tea on coming-of-age queerness, pathos, and the pleasure of the century’s end. It’s my perfect time capsule and this is the perfect book.” — Margaret Cho
"With personal images, sincere prose, and powerfully intimate excerpts from her father’s unpublished memoir, Taormino’s text very much orbits around her relationship with her father. The woman emerging from the grief has become a powerful, inspirational, unapologetic sex educator and creative dynamo. A passionate memoir packed with emotional punch and enlightening glimpses of personal liberation." — Kirkus Reviews
"A Part Of The Heart Can’t Be Eaten is an entertaining and important historical document and what makes Taormino’s story especially interesting is that she hails from the days before the internet took over. Her heyday was the 1990s, a time when sexual exploration could still be underground, so it had time to mature." — Stephanie Theobald, Daily Beast
"A Part of the Heart Can’t Be Eaten is a captivating romp through Taormino’s life. . . . This striking portrait of a bold, self-identified femme dyke is intimate, wise, and uncompromising. Taormino offers a kinky sex scene for every emotional gut-punch, sealing her place as a crucial voice in sex and a sharp narrator of both personal and political queer history." — Ro White, them