If you have ever attended
In The Flesh and had a good time, please tell at least one person about tomorrow night's very special 4-year anniversary blowout event. This is my baby, my labor of love (I get a cut of the door but put that back into photography/videography/snacks) and my longest-running project. I've had 3 sex columns that have all been canned but this free event has been going and going.
Here's the master list of everyone who's read (as of I think August).
Tomorrow is truly a not-to-be-missed event. We have sex toys and porn and books and the gold JimmyJane vibrator to give away, and art cupcakes with the drawing
Molly Crabapple did of me. I can honestly say that in 2005 I had no idea In The Flesh would become so special. It's a hell of a lot of work - I am constantly booking, promoting, scheming about it, but I love it. Maybe not the being-in-front-of-the-mic-to-read-my-smut part - that still makes me nervous - but the hosting, that I love.
So please come out and join us for a truly special event. Doors are at 7 and that's when I recommend arriving; we will start at 7:30. I even bought a new timer to keep everyone in line. If you're running late, we'll be around until 10.
Also see the upcoming lineups:
Sex and Religion Night, December 17Sex and Food Night, January 21Love and Lust Night, February 18And I don't have the lineup all HTML-ed yet but the March 18 BDSM Lineup (subject to change but pretty firm) is: Me, Melissa Febos, Selina Fire, Monk, Julie Powell, Xan West, Mollena Williams and Lolita Wolf. AKA, AWESOME.
And
here's my Amazon.com list of the books we'll be hearing from in 2010 at In The Flesh...so far. April 15 is Nerd Sex Night and May 20th is True Sex Confessions and June 17 is GLBT Night.
You can also keep up with In The Flesh:
And just because, I will repost two of my favorite things that have been said about In The Flesh:
New York Press:Even though Happy Ending Lounge is most closely associated with its namesake series (which has picked up and moved to Joe's Pub), there's something a bit naughtier brewing at the Broome Street den of debauchery. Now in its fourth year, In the Flesh, hosted by Rachel Kramer Bussel, features established and up-and-coming writers sharing their franky, funny, frisky tales of love and lust and manages to do so—for the most part—without veering into creepshow territory. Tension is cut by asking the audience to anonymously submit sexy secrets, and it doesn't hurt that Bussel provides hundreds of cupcakes and not-to-be-missed miniature peanut butter cups to lull everyone into a sugar-induced sense of security. Normally we would avoid an erotic reading series like the plague, but after venturing down here to catch a friend reading her dirty dissertation, we were charmed by the humor of the readers and crowd and not at all displeased by the fact that everything we heard was actually—surprisingly—sexy.Susie Bright:
I have read and performed at hundreds of venues, all over the world— and in terms of sheer class, generosity, and author-happiness, the only producer who comes close to Rachel, is the British Film Institute. And they don't have cupcakes.This
Molly Crabapple-drawn In The Flesh logo will be on a dozen special cupcakes for the early birds!
IN THE FLESH EROTIC READING SERIES
4-YEAR ANNIVERSARY, SPANKING STORIES, SEX BLOGGER CALENDAR & MORE!
November 19th at 7:30 PM (doors at 7; note early start time)
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://www.inthefleshreadingseries.comWe're celebrating 4 years of sexy smut with a party and reading galore! Bringing back memoirists
Lily Burana (
I Love a Man in Uniform, Strip City) and
Isobella Jade (
Model Life, Almost 5'4"),
Erica Kennedy (
Feminista, Bling),
Abiola Abrams (BET, author of
Dare),
Jennifer Peters (
Penthouse Forum),
Desiree (contributor,
The Mile High Club) along with
Bottoms Up: Spanking Good Stories contributors
Tess Danesi and
Rosalind Christine Lloyd. You will also hear from the organizers of the 2010 NYC Sex Blogger Calendar, which Tess and host
Rachel Kramer Bussel (
Peep Show, Spanked, Bottoms Up) posed for! Copies of authors' books and the calendar will be for sale. 300 free cupcakes from
Baked by Melissa will be served. Prize giveaways include:
24-karat gold vibrator Little Gold ($325 value) from
JimmyJane,
paddle and slapper from
Extreme Restraints, $100
Babeland gift card from
Beyond the Birds and the Bees, 2 copies of the
2010 Sex Blogger Calendar (featuring Tess, Rachel, Abiola and others), Abiola Abrams' novel
Dare, XXX porn film
Afrodite Superstar and hot word game
SexySlang.
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. The series was named
Best Reading Series by
New York Press in 2009. 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, Mike Daisey, 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, Flavorwire, Gothamist, Jezebel.com, Nerve.com and Wonkette, and has been praised by Dr. Ruth.
Once upon a fabulous time
Abiola Abrams was raised by Guyanese royalty in a gorgeous suburban ghetto of New York City, appropriately called the "Queens County." These are her chronicles:
Dare is her first novel, and her writing is featured in the anthologies
Dirty Words, Behind the Bedroom Door and
A Memory A Monologue A Rant & A Prayer. Abiola's films range from
Knives in My Throat, about mental illness, to
Afrodite Superstar, about sexuality. She has hosted shows for BET, HBO and NBC and is now also a host-producer of
The Planet Abiola Show. Recently audiences enjoyed watching Abiola get her dating game together as "Miss Picky" on VH1's Drew Barrymore-produced hit reality series
Tough Love.
www.abiolatv.com Lily Burana is a punk rock girl turned writer and editor. Since starting her writing life as a columnist and editor at punk and alternative 'zines, she has gone on to write for
The Washington Post, GQ, The New York Times, Self, Glamour, Entertainment Weekly, Details, The Village Voice, The New York Observer, and others. She has been a Contributing Editor at
SPIN and
New York magazines. Lily married an active-duty Army officer in 2002. Her latest book,
I Love a Man in Uniform: A Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles (Weinstein Books, 2009) was inspired by the overwhelming response she received to her writing about the domestic side of military affairs--a Slate Diary and a
New York Times Op-Ed. Her first non-fiction book,
Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America (Miramax Books, 2001) made Best of the Year lists in
Entertainment Weekly, Salon,
New York Newsday, and
Rocky Mountain News. Lily BuranaRachel 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.comphoto by Hilary McHone
Often based on her own explorations in the world of D/s and BDSM,
Tess Danesi explores the darker side of erotica, writing with raw honesty about that shadowy area where pain becomes pleasure and pleasure pain. Tess has been published in several anthologies including
Pleasure Bound by Alison Tyler,
Do Not Disturb and
Bottoms Up by Rachel Kramer Bussel as well as in
Time Out New York. CarnalNation.com generously sends her amazing sex toys to review and she can often be found testing them in her high tech masturbation testing facility aka the office ladies room. In between all that and her actual job, for two years running, she’s produced the
NYC Sex Blogger Calendar which raises funds for Sex Work Awareness. She blogs about life, death and everything in between at Urban Gypsy (
http://nyc-urban-gypsy.blogspot.com).
Desiree is a brainy, sexy, foodie, geeky, writer chick from New York. She lives in Brooklyn with her vampire cat Snarf and has always had an inclination toward the naughty. She never backs down from a Scrabble challenge and once scored seventy six points with the word "clitoris." Her dirty stories have been published in anthologies such as
Lust Chronicles and
The Mile High Club: Plane Sex Stories and her musings about sex have appeared in the Huffington Post and The Frisky. She blogs about love, sex, and life at
www.baserinstincts.com. For general info on her antics or to find out where to read her stuff, check out
www.desireemoodie.com.
Isobella Jade is known as one of the tiniest working models out there. She is also the author of
Almost 5’4”, her modeling memoir. In early November her graphic novel
Model Life: The Journey of a Pint Size Fashion Warrior debuts. Daily Isobella gives modeling insight and advice on being a shorter-than-average model on her blog, and despite her height she has used what she does have and has modeled for Marshalls, Victoria's Secret, Easy Spirit, Macy’s, Bon Appétit, TLC, Univision, MTV, Women's World, and many, many others. Her story and advocating has been featured in
The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, Allure.com, Page Six,
Ad Age, The New York Post, WSJ, Nylon, Mediabistro.
www.isobelladreams.com Thanks to the aggressive heroine of her second novel,
Feminista,
Publisher's Weekly as called
Erica Kennedy "the pioneer of bitch lit". She is also a screenwriter and blogger who began her writing career by blindly pitching and selling a humor piece on why women love to hate Gwyneth Paltrow to the
New York Daily News women's section where she became a frequent contributor. She has written celebrity profiles and style pieces for
In Style, Vibe, Paper and UK Elle. She blogs about pop culture and all things FEM at The Feminista Files (
thefeministafiles.blogspot.com/).
Rosalind Christine Lloyd is a contemporary fiction and erotica writer (and occasional poet, journalist and music reviewer) whose work has appeared in over fifteen anthologies. She currently has two novels in progress, is working on a compilation of her published short fiction and has one completed screenplay. She lives downtown with her queer version of a nuclear family.
http://rosalindchristinelloyd.blogspot.comJennifer Peters is the associate editor of
Penthouse Forum and
Girls of Penthouse and a contributing editor to
Penthouse Magazine. Her work has appeared in several places under numerous names, but her favorite bylines use her real name. Those rare works have appeared in
Forum, Penthouse and Rachel Kramer Bussel's
Peep Show anthology.
You'll be hearing readings from these books:
Bottoms Up: Spanking Good Stories
Model Life: The Journey of a Pint-Size Fashion Warrior
I Love a Man in UniformGiveaways include (more TK):
24-karat gold Little Gold vibrator courtesy of
JimmyJaneFrom
Extreme Restraints:Strict Leather Black Fraternity Paddle12" Slapper With Holes$100
Babeland gift card from
Beyond the Birds and the BeesSexySlang word gameXXX porn film
Afrodite SuperstarAbiola Abrams' novel
DareWe're giving away 2 copies of the calendar!
Labels: Abiola Abrams, Baked by Melissa, erotica, Extreme Restraints, free cupcakes, Isobella Jade, JimmyJane, Lily Burana, Molly Crabapple, paddle, Rachel Kramer Bussel, sex toys, spanking, vibrator