Working Sex (24 page)

 

AMBER DAWN (a.k.a. Trala La) is a grassroots darling, writer, and performance artist based in Vancouver, Canada. Her first book, an anthology of femme-written porn titled
With A Rough Tongue
(Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2005), was nominated for an Independent Publishers Award. Her genderfuck docuporn,
Girl on Girl,
screened in eight countries, has been added to the gender studies curriculum at Concordia University, Montreal. She organizes an annual FTM top-surgery fundraiser, “For The Boys.” She is the editor of and writing mentor for a zine written by and for male and transgendered street workers. After more than fifteen years of survival-turned-sex work, she is now employed as a sexual health educator at Western Canada’s oldest AIDS service organization and is working on her second book—a magical realism novel.

 

STEPHEN ELLIOTT is a former stripper and the author of six books, including
Happy Baby
(San Francisco, CA: McSweeney’s Books, 2004), a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lion Award, as well as a best book of 2004 in
salon.com
,
Newsday, Chicago New City,
the
Journal News,
and
The Village Voice.
His most recent book is an almost all true sexual memoir called
My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up
(San Francisco, CA: Cleis Press, 2006). His work has been featured in
Esquire, The New York Times, GQ, Best American Non-Required Reading, Best American Erotica,
and
Best Sex Writing 2006.
He is the founder of the Progressive Reading Series and the executive director of LitPAC, a literary political action committee.

 

JANELLE GALAZIA is a stripper and hooker and daydreamer. She loves to write and think and make money. She has no special credits to her name, but is constantly trying to live up to the image she had of her adult self when she was a child.

 

Born and raised in Chicago, former hair-metal fanatic ANA J started verbalizing her inner demons in 1995. After a few years of self-publishing her stories in zines and corunning an independent zine distro, she moved to Olympia, Washington where she continued to self-publish. She collaborated through the years with many other artists and performers she didn’t really keep track of. Upon returning to Chicago, she joined forces with Ms. Nomy Lamm to create and cohost The Finger, a highly successful, all-inclusive monthly queer variety show. She has in the past performed with Sister Spit, cohosted countless drag shows, and toured with the Sex Workers Art Show in
2004. Ana J has been involved in the seedy underbelly of the adult carnival for the past nine years, the past six as a professional dominatrix. She currently resides in Tucson, Arizona where she is employed as a baker and is working on a comic/ cookbook/book. She spends most of her time collecting owlrelated bric-a-brac and browsing the aisles of grocery stores aimlessly for hours without making a single purchase.

 

JUBA KALAMKA is a producer, curator, essayist, and consensus H.N.I.C. of the western hemisphere. He is the creator of the microlabel and distro Sugartruck Recordings, is a founding member of the award-winning homohop crew Deep Dickollective (D/DC). Kalamka is the director of the PeaceOUT World Homohop Festival in Oakland, California, which celebrates its seventh year in 2007 and has spawned sister events in New York City, Atlanta, and London, England. Kalamka is featured in the homohop documentary Pick Up The Mic and recently completed an MFA in Poetics at New College of California in San Francisco. He lives in Oakland with his primary partner, their daughter, and a love-mongering cat. He practices polyamory both locally and globally.

 

EMI KOYAMA puts the emi back in feminism at
http://eminism.org
.

 

CHRIS KRAUS is the author of the novels
Torpor
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006),
Aliens & Anorexia
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), and a collection of essays about the Los Angeles art world,
Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness
(New York, NY: Semiotext(e), 2004). She is the coeditor of
Hatred of Capitalism.
She has written on art, poetics, and theory for academic anthologies and art magazines. Kraus is the founding editor of Semiotext(e)’s Native Agents imprint.

 

BRUCE LABRUCE is a writer, filmmaker, and photographer stuck in the gulag otherwise known as Toronto, Canada. He started out as a child, then quickly moved on to the production of homo punk fanzines (
J.D.s
[with G.B. Jones],
Dumb Bitch Deserves To Die
[with Candy Parker]) and Super-8 mm movies. These products helped to launch the so-called homo-core or queer-core movement, which corrupted a whole new generation of homosexuals. LaBruce’s early films,
No Skin Off My Ass
and
Super 8 1/2
went on to become cult hits and film festival circuit favorites, earning slots in such highprofile fests as Sundance, London, Berlin, Dublin, Thessaloniki, Toronto, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Tokyo. LaBruce’s
Hustler White,
made in collaboration with Rick Castro, premiered at Sundance and similarly went on to become a film festival and cult favorite, winning the grand prize at the International Trash Film Festival. Hustler was followed by
his first legitimate porn film,
Skin Flick.
LaBruce’s photography and writing has appeared in a wide range of publications including
Honcho, Inches, Index Magazine, Eye Magazine, The National Post, The UK Guardian, Dutch, Butt, Strut, Dazed and Confused, Loyal, The Breeder, Bon,
and
K48.
He has also produced two books,
The Reluctant Pornographer
(1997), his premature memoirs, from Gutter Press, and
Ride, Queer, Ride
(1997), a survey of his work from Plug-In Books.

 

NOMY LAMM is a writer, singer, and self-taught accordion player. She began writing zines at age seventeen, focusing on body-hatred and the systems that enforce it. In the fourteen years since then she has written, performed, and organized around queerness, body image, trauma and disability, feminism, trans inclusion, radical Jewish identity, antiracist ally work, and more. Her writing has been published in numerous feminist anthologies including
Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation
(Barbara Findlen, ed., Seattle, WA: Seal Press, 2001) and
Body Outlaws: Writings on Body Image and Identity
(Ophira Edut, ed., Seattle, WA: Seal Press, 2000). She writes an advice column for the feminist magazine
make/ shift,
and is currently working on her first novel.

 

ARIEL SMITH is an award-winning filmmaker and video artist who has been creating her own independent works
since 2001, many of which have screened at festivals internationally. Her most recent works include
1, 2, 3 KnockUP
(2006, DV) and
Savior Complex
(2007, 16mm) She currently resides in Ottawa by way of Vancouver and Montreal.

 

GLORIA LOCKETT is the former codirector of the prostitutes rights organization COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) and Executive Director of the California Prostitute Education Project (CAL-PEP), an Oakland-based, nonprofit AIDS and HIV prevention organization that works with street prostitutes. Lockett served on San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan’s Task Force on Prostitution and as a member of former Governor George Deukmejian’s California AIDS Leadership Task Force. She has been published in several anthologies, including
The Black Women’s Health Book: Speaking for Ourselves,
edited by Evelyn C. White (Seattle, WA: Seal Press, 1990),
Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry,
edited by Frederique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander (San Francisco, CA: Cleis Press, 1984), and
Lessons from the Damned: Queers, Whores and Junkies Respond to AIDS,
by Nancy Stoller (New York: Routledge, 1998). She was also, for eighteen years, a prostitute.

 

NAIMA LOWE creates films, performances, and writings that consistently defy genre and explore the complex relationships
between racial identity, collective memory, the body, and queer sexuality. Naima’s work has been featured in the Sex Workers Art Show, The Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and at Rites and Reason Theatre in Providence, Rhode Island. Her recent film,
Birthmarks,
a thirty-minute experimental documentary about her father witnessing the 1967 Newark Riots, has been selected to travel the country and the world as part of NextFrame, an international touring festival of student films. Naima graduated from Brown University with a BA in Africana Studies in 2002, and is completing her MFA in Film and Media Arts from Temple University. Naima has two cats and misses the ocean.

 

JESSICA MELUSINE is a writer, model, and bon vivant featured in
Paying for It, Shameless, Zaftig Glamour Girls: Femme/ Femme Erotica,
and a performer at Perverts Put Out! and assorted Ladyfests. Her story
Avatar in Pink
appears in
Red Light: Superheroes, Saints, and Sluts
(Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004); the book has been nominated for both a Lambda Award and an IPPY.

 

VERONICA MONET offers workshops, lectures, and professional advice on sex and relationships. Veronica Monet’s
Sex Secrets of Escorts: Tips from a Pro
(New York, NY: Alpha Books, 2005) is available in most major bookstores. Her extensive
media credits include CNN, A&E, ABC’s 20/20, FOX News, Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect and
The New York Times.
Monet was educated at Oregon State University, graduating with honors as a psychology major. Monet is also published in six books including a textbook,
Human Sexuality: Opposing Viewpoints
(St. Paul, MN: Greenhaven Press, 1995),
Whores and Other Feminists
(New York, NY: Routledge, 1997),
Breaking Ritual Silence
(Gardnerville, TN: Trout and Sons, 1998),
Porn 101
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1999),
Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving
(New York, NY: Harrington Park Press, 2004) and
Paying for It
(Oakland, CA: Greenery Press, 2004). Monet has over a decade of experience with the practical and political aspects of sex work, having worked as an erotic model, porn actress, prostitute, escort, and courtesan. Her political activism includes volunteer work for Bay Area Bisexual Network, COYOTE San Francisco, and Sex Worker Outreach Project. Ms. Monet is a Certified Sex Educator (SFSI), a founding member of the Association of Sexual Energy Professionals (ASEP), a trained volunteer for the Center Against Rape and Domestic Violence (CARDV) and an Ordained Minister (ULC). Her next book promises a departure from the sex-manual genre while maintaining her uncompromising passion for exploring sensible alternatives to society’s sacred cows. Please visit
www.flossophy.net
. for clues.

 

EILEEN MYLES has written thousands of poems since she gave her first reading at CBGB’s in 1974.
BUST
magazine calls her “the rock star of modern poetry” and
The New York Times
says she’s “a cult figure to a generation of post-punk females forming their own literary avant-garde.” Eileen headed to New York after college (University of Massachusetts, Boston), quickly gaining the friendship of Allen Ginsberg, working for poet James Schuyler, becoming a habitué of the household of Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley, and generally being a notable part of the turbulent punk and art scene that animated Manhattan’s East Village. From 1977-1979, she edited the poetry magazine,
dodgems.
From 1984-1986, she was artistic director of St. Mark’s Poetry Project. She also wrote, acted in, and directed plays at St. Mark’s and PS 122. Always, she has been a virtuoso performer of her own work—she’s read to audiences at colleges, performance spaces, and bookstores across America as well as in Europe, Iceland, and Russia. In 1992, she conducted an openly female write-in campaign for president of the United States. In 1997, Eileen toured with Sister Spit Ramblin’ Road Show. Her books include
Sorry, Tree
(Seattle, WA: Wave Books, 2007),
Skies
(Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 2001),
on my way
(Newton, MA: Faux Press, 2001),
Cool for You
(New York, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2000),
School of Fish
(Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1997),
Maxfield Parrish
(Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1995),
Not Me
(New York, NY: Semiotext(e), 1991), and
Chelsea Girls
(Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1994). In 1995, with Liz Kotz, she edited
The New Fuck You/Adventures in Lesbian Reading
(New York, NY: Semiotext(e), 1995). She’s a frequent contributor to
Book Forum, Art in America, The Village Voice, The Nation, The Stranger, Index,
and
Nest.

 

BLAKE NEMEC is a media activist, phlebotomist, and sound engineer. His writing has been published in
San Francisco Bay Times, slingshot, Lip Magazine,
as well as in two anthologies,
From the Inside Out
(San Francisco, CA: Manic D Press, 2004) and
That’s Revolting!
(Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2004). He is a sound technician with five years’ dedication to national microradio and independent media groups. He has worked as a boom operator and sound engineer in various independent films including
Dear Doctors: Born Queer.

 

KIRK READ is the author of
How I Learned to Snap
(Athens, GA: Hill Street Press, 2001), a memoir about being openly gay in a small Virginia high school.
Snap
was named an Honor Book by the American Library Association. Read spent two years touring to 120 cities and towns to spread the gospel of sexed-up heavy metal queer teenagers. He is working on a novel and a memoir about sex work called
This is the Thing.
He frequently performs at colleges around
the country and hosts spoken-word events around San Francisco, including the open mics Smack Dab and K’vetch. He is a longtime counselor and phlebotomist at St. James Infirmary, San Francisco’s free health clinic for current and former sex workers. At the infirmary, he started a support group for male sex workers in 1999 and was volunteer coordinator. This semester, he finishes his MFA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University and is the apprentice of a gourmet organic chef. He’s a southern gentleman and a witch.