Sinclair Sexsmith reads at In The Flesh Reading Series

Sinclair Sexsmith reads something non-virginal at Virgin Night.

Sarah Wendell reads about paranormal romance from Beyond Heaving Bosom

Sarah Wendell of the blog Smart Bitches Trashy Books reads about paranormal romance from her book (co-authored with Candy Tan) Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels.

Anna David reads about kept women from Bought at In The Flesh Reading Series

See more about Anna David's novel Bought at www.canyoubebought.com

Emily Farris on sex in Kansas City vs. New York (aka, real estate lust and orgasm)

From April's In The Flesh.

Check Emily Farris out every day at Scanner. And on Twitter.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times: an apology

I just wanted to formally, publicly thank everyone who came out on Thursday night to In The Flesh, and especially Catalina, Abe, and Gina at Happy Ending Lounge.

I failed as a host and I apologize, especially to Craig Yoe, whose PowerPoint presentation was indeed worth waiting for. I'm so excited to share the videos with all of you (hopefully by Monday, or else ASAP). We had technical difficulties and those were my fault for not being more on the ball and getting things set up in advance. I feel truly badly for the delays and am so impressed with the wonderful audience for your patience and laptop assistance.

THANK YOU for coming (ha ha - not just the wonderful Mara Altman!), for laughing, for buying books and for being so supportive. I promise to be a better, more organized reading series host in the future!

Orgasm quest: Mara Altman talks about her memoir Thanks for Coming

And thank YOU for coming out tomorrow night, May 21st, to hear Mara and the rest of the awesome In The Flesh lineup! May 21, 8-10 pm, Happy Ending Lounge, 302 Broome Street, NYC (FREE plus candy and cupcakes!) - click here (or see below) for full lineup/directions.

"I discovered while writing this book that people actually live on orgasms."

This Thursday May 21st: Hot stories, free cupcakes, big giveaways!

IN THE FLESH EROTIC READING SERIES
May 21st at 8 PM (doors at 7; we recommend arriving by 7:30 for a seat)
AT HAPPY ENDING LOUNGE, 302 BROOME STREET, NYC
(B/D to Grand, J/M/Z to Bowery, F to Delancey or F/V to 2nd Avenue, http://www.happyendinglounge.com)
Between Forsyth & Eldridge. Look for the hot pink awning that says "XIE HE Health Club."
Admission: Free
Happy Ending Lounge: 212-334-9676
http://inthefleshreadingseries.blogspot.com

May’s In The Flesh offers a mix of steamy erotica, kept women, an orgasm quest, the mile high club, real-life sex adventures, and an intriguing look at Superman’s fetish art. Featuring novelist Anna David (Bought, Party Girl) on kept women, memoirist Mara Altman (Thanks for Coming) on looking for an orgasm, erotica writers Jeremy Edwards (Oysters & Chocolate) and Robin Glasser (My Life as a Concubine), memoirist Suzanne Guillette (Much to Your Chagrin), Blaise K (host, How I Learned Reading Series), and Craig Yoe (Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-creator Joe Shuster). Hosted and curated by Rachel Kramer Bussel (The Mile High Club, Do Not Disturb, Spanked). Books will be for sale by Mobile Libris. Giveaways include the fun word game SexySlang, samples of Wet® together™ lube, a copy of Oysters & Chocolate and Ravenous Romance e-book gift cards. Free chips, cookies, candy and cupcakes by Baked by Melissa will be served.

In the Flesh is a monthly reading series hosted at the appropriately named Happy Ending Lounge, and features the country's best erotic writers sharing stories to get you hot and bothered, hosted and curated by acclaimed erotic writer and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel. From erotic poetry to down and dirty smut, these authors get naked on the page and will make you lust after them and their words. Since its debut in October 2005, In the Flesh has featured such authors as Laura Antoniou, Mo Beasley, Susie Bright, Lily Burana, Jessica Cutler, Stephen Elliott, Valerie Frankel, Polly Frost, Gael Greene, Andy Horwitz, Debra Hyde, Maxim Jakubowski, Emily Scarlet Kramer of CAKE, Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Edith Layton, Logan Levkoff, Suzanne Portnoy, Sofia Quintero, M.J. Rose, Lauren Sanders, Danyel Smith, Grant Stoddard, Cecilia Tan, Carol Taylor, Dana Vachon, Veronica Vera, Susan Wright, Zane and many others. The series has gotten press attention from the New York Times’s UrbanEye, Escape (Hong Kong), Flavorpill, The L Magazine, New York Magazine, New York Observer, Philadelphia City Paper, Time Out New York, Gothamist, Nerve.com and Wonkette, and has been praised by Dr. Ruth.

Mara Altman is the author of Thanks for Coming: One Young Woman's Quest for Orgasm (Harper Perennial) and has written for daily newspapers in India and Thailand. She was a former staff writer for The Village Voice and has written for New York Magazine and The New York Times. She is currently an adjunct faculty at Columbia University's Journalism School, and working on her next book project. She lives in Brooklyn with her computer.
www.maraaltman.com

Rachel Kramer Bussel is an author, editor, blogger and reading series host. She is Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations and a former sex columnist for The Village Voice. She’s edited numerous anthologies, most recently The Mile High Club: Plane Sex Stories, Do Not Disturb: Hotel Sex Stories, Best Sex Writing 2009, Tasting Him, Tasting Her, and Spanked. Her writing been published in publications such as Clean Sheets, Cosmopolitan, The Daily Beast, Fresh Yarn, Huffington Post, Mediabistro, Newsday, New York Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Tango, The Village Voice, and Time Out New York, and in over 100 anthologies, including Best American Erotica 2004 and 2006. She has hosted In The Flesh since October 2005.
www.rachelkramerbussel.com

HarperCollins released Anna David's novel, Party Girl, in 2007, the same year that an essay of hers appeared in the Dutton anthology Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys. Sony Television has purchased the film rights to Party Girl. Harper Perennial will release Anna's second novel, Bought, in May 2009 and her anthology on reality shows in early 2010. Anna is also the sex and relationship expert on G4’s Attack of the Show, appears every month on the Fox News cult favorite Red Eye, has been featured regularly on The Today Show, Hannity & Colmes, and Showbiz Tonight, and occasionally pops up on MTV News, VH1 and E. Her Sirius radio show on the Maxim channel, "Sex Files," was the network's number-one specialty show and she's been published in Playboy, Details, Cosmo, Redbook, Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The L.A. Times, and Maxim, among many others.
www.annadavid.com

The libidinous fiction of Jeremy Edwards has been widely published online, as well as in over thirty print anthologies (new releases include The Mile High Club, Oysters & Chocolate, and Playing with Fire). His work was selected for the two most recent volumes in the Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica series; while in the world of periodicals, his lascivious prose can be found frolicking in magazines like Scarlet. Jeremy's eroto-comedic novel Rock My Socks Off has been acquired for upcoming release by Xcite Books. Drop in on him unannounced (and thereby catch him in his underwear) at http://jerotic.blogspot.com.

A recovering copywriter, Robin Glasser has written for a variety of magazines ranging from Readers’ Digest to Penthouse Letters, where she wrote a column called “The Red Hot Woman.” Her poetry has been published in Upstairs at Duroc and The Riverside Poets Review. Robin guarantees Men at Work, her book of suggestive poetry, will put twinkles in your eyes and sparkles in your pants. Ms. Glasser’s latest novel, My Life as a Concubine, which is based on her experiences in Paris or as she likes to call it, The City of Merde, is available at www.phaze.com and Amazon and in a Kindle edition. She now reads at various venues in New York.
www.myspace.com/robinglasser

Suzanne Guillette's first book, Much to Your Chagrin: A Memoir of Embarrassment, chronicles the year she spent collecting embarrassing stories on the streets of Manhattan, in hopes of compiling them for a book. But, as the year progressed and the stories began to pile up, Suzanne slowly came to realize that the embarrassing story she was really meant to tell was her own. Her work has appeared in Tin House and SELF, in addition to a handful of other publications. Suzanne holds a Bachelor's in Philosophy and a Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Non-fiction.
www.suzanneguillette.com

Blaise K is the host and producer of the How I Learned Reading Series at Happy Ending. She is also a writer, photographer, and veteran blogger who has appeared at PS 122, Lolita, Bowery Poetry Club, Lucky 13, and The Tank at Collective Unconscious. Between her writing and photography, she has been published in Nerve, Vice, The Black Table, The Morning News, Gothamist, Gawker, Playbill, and in the books Mortified and Cringe. She believes 2009 might be the year she finally finishes writing her novel, but she also has a lot of YouTube videos to catch up on.
www.bazima.com

Craig Yoe the author of Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-creator Joe Shuster. After co-creating Superman and selling the rights for $130 dolllars, Joe Shuster found himself on hard times in the 1950s and illustrated dark S+M porn for under-the counter pulps. The Nights of Horror books figured into the murder trioal of the Brooklyn Thrill Killers, Jewish Nazi juvenile deliquents who horsewhipped girls and killed bums in Brooklyn Parks inspired by this porn. The Supreme Court banned the books and ordered them destroyed. Yoe runs the New York design firm YOE! Studio with Clizia Gussoni, and is the author of over 30 books, including The Art of Mickey Mouse. Yoe has won the Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators, two Addys, a Mobius, and an Eisner Award.

Blaise K is the host of the How I Learned Reading Series. Her written work has been published in four online magazines, one print magazine, and one newspaper, and she has been written up favorably in four newspapers, one British magazine and one newsletter for young orthodox Jews who live in Toronto. She has two websites, one blog, five cameras, four wigs, and two signature karaoke songs. She has been 29 since 2002, and single for approximately 180 days and is thusly available for parties and rebounding. She performs often and eight times out of 10 she’s pretty funny.
www.bazima.com

You will be hearing from the following books:













Below are images from Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-creator Joe Shuster.





Free samples of Wet® together™ will be given away:

Great interview about In The Flesh at Flavorwire

I love this interview Mandy Van Deven did with me over at Flavorwire about In The Flesh called "The Mouth is the Hottest Part of the Body." Complete with video and everything. Do check it out (and if you like it, please rate it at the bottom).

FP: So sex sells and all, but what do you think draws people to the event?

RKB: I bring a lot of food! (Laughs.) Chips, cookies, candy, and cupcakes. I’m the founder and co-editor of the cupcake blog Cupcakes Take the Cake, and am also one of those people who never shows up to a party empty-handed. I go to Trader Joe’s every month and stock up on snacks galore, plus now we have mini cupcakes from Baked by Melissa. I think food, especially chocolate, is sexy — so they go together. It’s also part of the whole throwing-a-party vibe.

We also have giveaways every month, like the game Sexy Slang or a gift basket from Good Vibrations. I wish I could give everyone a goodie bag to take home, but I try to feed them and give out prizes so they walk away with something more than just the stories they’ve heard — and hopefully want to return.

Oh, and everything is free! Having the event be free is very important to me. I wouldn’t feel comfortable charging money for people to hear me read, and if people show up and aren’t into it, they can leave without having lost anything.

GLBT Erotica Night is June 18th!

IN THE FLESH EROTIC READING SERIES
3rd ANNUAL GLBT EROTICA NIGHT
June 18th at 8 PM (doors at 7; we recommend arriving by 7:30 for a seat)
AT HAPPY ENDING LOUNGE, 302 BROOME STREET, NYC
(B/D to Grand, J/M/Z to Bowery, F to Delancey or F/V to 2nd Avenue, http://www.happyendinglounge.com)
Between Forsyth & Eldridge. Look for the hot pink awning that says "XIE HE Health Club."
Admission: Free
Happy Ending Lounge: 212-334-9676
http://inthefleshreadingseries.blogspot.com

In The Flesh celebrates Pride with our 3rd annual GLBT Erotica Night! Featuring GO editor Diana Cage, comedian Kelli Dunham, and erotica writers Madlyn March, Kimberly “Q”, Rob Stephenson, and Xan West. Hosted and curated by Rachel Kramer Bussel (Glamour Girls, First-Timers, The Mile High Club). Free candy and cupcakes by Baked by Melissa will be served.

In the Flesh is a monthly reading series hosted at the appropriately named Happy Ending Lounge, and features the country's best erotic writers sharing stories to get you hot and bothered, hosted and curated by acclaimed erotic writer and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel. From erotic poetry to down and dirty smut, these authors get naked on the page and will make you lust after them and their words. Since its debut in October 2005, In the Flesh has featured such authors as Laura Antoniou, Mo Beasley, Susie Bright, Lily Burana, Jessica Cutler, Stephen Elliott, Valerie Frankel, Polly Frost, Gael Greene, Andy Horwitz, Debra Hyde, Maxim Jakubowski, Emily Scarlet Kramer of CAKE, Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Edith Layton, Logan Levkoff, Suzanne Portnoy, Sofia Quintero, M.J. Rose, Lauren Sanders, Danyel Smith, Grant Stoddard, Cecilia Tan, Carol Taylor, Dana Vachon, Veronica Vera, Susan Wright, Zane and many others. The series has gotten press attention from the New York Times’s UrbanEye, Escape (Hong Kong), Flavorpill, The L Magazine, New York Magazine, New York Observer, Philadelphia City Paper, Time Out New York, Gothamist, Nerve.com and Wonkette, and has been praised by Dr. Ruth.

Rachel Kramer Bussel is an author, editor, blogger and reading series host. She is Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations and a former sex columnist for The Village Voice. She’s edited numerous anthologies, two of which (Up All Night and Glamour Girls) have been Lambda Literary Award finalists, most recently The Mile High Club: Plane Sex Stories, Do Not Disturb: Hotel Sex Stories, Best Sex Writing 2009, Tasting Him, Tasting Her, and Spanked. Her writing been published in publications such as Clean Sheets, Cosmopolitan, The Daily Beast, Fresh Yarn, Huffington Post, Mediabistro, Newsday, New York Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Tango, The Village Voice, and Time Out New York, and in over 100 anthologies, including Best American Erotica 2004 and 2006. She has hosted In The Flesh since October 2005.
www.rachelkramerbussel.com

Diana Cage is the author of three hilarious books on sex and dating: Girl Meets Girl: A Dating Survival Guide, Box Lunch: The Layperson’s Guide to Cunnilingus, and Threeways: Fulfill Your Ultimate Fantasy. She is the former host of The Diana Cage Show on Sirius XM and still pops up on the radio a couple of times a month to give advice on sex and love to lonelyhearts everywhere. Her writing has appeared in countless journals, anthologies and magazines and she currently writes on sex and politics for Shewired and Velvetpark. She is featured in the Here! Television series Lesbian Sex and Sexuality, and is now trying to figure out what's left to write about.
www.dianacage.com

Kelli Dunham is a genderqueer Fresh Fruit award-winning comic, ex-nun and a Wisconsin farmgrrl gone very bad. She has two comedy CDs to her credit: I am NOT a 12 Year Old Boy and Almost Pretty and is the co-producer of Gayety, Brooklyn's experimental queer comedy cabaret. She is on the organizing board of the Butch Voices
(www.butchvoices.com) and is the author of four published books of light hearted nonfiction and a frequent contributor to humorous anthologies. She is currently touring Pudding Day, an irreverent one boi show about her partner's struggle with cancer. In June she is launching the first of episode of Queerhouse Rock, an animated parody of the 1970 kids' cartoon series Schoolhouse Rock. She has performed at the Risque strip club in Philadelphia, at numerous churches, Lacrosse Wisconsin Pride, and a livestock auction. She once taught a nun to masturbate. With great success.
www.kellidunham.com

Madlyn March is the pseudonym of a writer whose work has appeared in the anthology First-Timers, Black Table, AfterEllen, AfterElton, Complete Woman, The New York Post, Time Out New York, and others. Toni is based on a bully who once tortured her, but the sexual part is all wishful thinking.

Kimberly "Q" (aka The Lesbian Goddess) is the writer, creator and author of Orchids: African American Lesbian Erotica One Night Stands, Orchids II: Reality or Fantasy and her just released Lesbian Funk A Journey Into The Oblivion. She formed her company Women of Choice to signify the choices of life that we as women dare to explore with a mission to go beyond the realm of women's comfort zones and normalcy by providing them with exotic adventures, unexplained pleasures, new and exciting ideas and inexplicable desires. Her books are episodes presented to entice, entertain and broaden the thoughts, actions and creativity of the lesbian sexual experience.
www.womenofchoice.com

Rob Stephenson's novel Passes Through will be published by Fiction Collective 2 in Spring of 2010. His novella U will be published later that year by Rebel Satori Press : Queer Mojo. Rob and Mikael Karlsson have made a CD called dog, now available from Please MusicWorks. They are currently working on new music that will be part of the Terry Riley Remixed CD released later this year by Innova Recordings.

Xan West is the pseudonym of an NYC BDSM and sex educator and writer. Xan's work can be found in Best SM Erotica 2, Got A Minute?, Love at First Sting, Best Women's Erotica 2008 and 2009, Men on the Edge, Leathermen, Backdraft: Firemen Erotica, DADDIES, Frenzy, Best Gay Erotica 2009, and the upcoming Cruising for Bad Boys, Pleasure Bound, and Sextime. Xan's story, "First Time Since", printed in Hurts So Good, won honorable mention for the 2008 National Leather Association's John Preston Short Fiction Award. Xan wants to hear from you, and can be found at xanwest.livejournal.com/ or emailed at xan_west at yahoo.com.

Lube, sex toys and other freebies at May 21st In The Flesh

I have LOTS of freebies to give away at the next In The Flesh on May 21st, including 3 sets of the fun board game Sexy Slang, a gift basket from Good Vibrations worth $100 (also giving one of those away June 18th and July 16th) and...5 sets of lube from Wet Together (pictured below), in addition to the usual array of free snacks and free cupcakes from Baked by Melissa.

Click here for reading details.

June 18, July 16, August 20th lineups

In brief:

June 18, GLBT Erotica Night

In The Flesh celebrates Pride with our 3rd annual GLBT Erotica Night! Featuring GO editor Diana Cage, comedian Kelli Dunham, and erotica writers Madlyn March, Kimberly “Q”, Rob Stephenson, and Xan West. Hosted and curated by Rachel Kramer Bussel (Glamour Girls, First-Timers, The Mile High Club). Free candy and cupcakes by Baked by Melissa will be served.

July 16, True Sex Confessions Night

We’re bringing back our most popular segment, True Sex Confessions Night! Featuring memoirist Lily Burana (I Love a Man in Uniform, Strip City), Mike Edison (I Have Fun Everywhere I Go), Melissa Gira Grant (Sexerati.com), Megan Carpentier (Jezebel.com), and Maria Diaz (contributor to The Lust Chronicles). Hosted and curated by Rachel Kramer Bussel (Best Sex Writing 2009, The Mile High Club, Spanked). Free candy and cupcakes by Baked by Melissa will be served.

August 20

In The Flesh makes August even hotter with these real-life sex stories and steamy erotica tales. Featuring art star Reverend Jen, author of Live Nude Elf: The Sexperiments of Reverend Jen, D.L. King, editor of the lesbian erotica anthology Where the Girls Are, Lisa Beth Kovetz, author of the new novel Lux’s Practical Erotica Adventures, Desiree, contributor to The Mile High Club: Plane Sex Stories, and David Henry Sterry, editor of the Soft Skull Press anthology Hos, Hustlers, Callgirls and Rentboys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex, along with contributors Jennifer Blowdryer, Zoe Hansen and Audacia Ray. Hosted and curated by Rachel Kramer Bussel (The Mile High Club, Do Not Disturb, Spanked). Free candy and cupcakes by Baked by Melissa will be served.