Rachel Kramer Bussel

I wish I'd marked on my calendar the date I first read Carol Queen's The Leather Daddy and the Femme. That would be the date when something clicked inside my brain and connected the fragmented parts of my erotic and intellectual understanding of my sexuality. Real Live Nude Girl and Pomosexuals cemented my crush on Carol. And then several years ago through a remarkable chain of mutual friends and happy coincidences we got to know each other "IRL". I'm thrilled that now Sex In The Public Square and Center for Sex and Culture can work together on all things sexual-freedom-related. To that end, we're co-hosting a cocktail hour and reading on Monday, June 8 from 6-9 in NYC. The event is free and open to the public (as long as you're over 21). Donations to Center for Sex and Culture are welcomed, and we're counting on you to help us meet our bar guarantee!

What: A Sex-Positive Soiree and Reading

Who: Carol Queen visits from San Francisco, joined by Rachel Kramer Bussel, Elizabeth Wood, Audacia Ray, and Sinclair Sexsmith!

When: Monday, June 8, 6-9 pm (reading will start between 7:30-8, last about an hour).

Where: Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street, NYC 

Why: Carol Queen's coming through town and wants to collaborate with her friends Rachel and Elizabeth to make a space for connecting, schmoozing, touching base, and furthering plans for sex-positive world domination! Her SF nonprofit The Center for Sex & Culture has hosted Rachel Kramer Bussel, worked with Elizabeth Wood on her online community Sex in the Public Square, and has plans to expand its educational and cultural offerings online as soon as we can (if we can't afford NY real estate, at least we can visit you via your computers). Come mingle with your fellow NY sex people and meet some new ones, then enjoy a reading that will surely be more salaciously smart/sexy brain candy than most people ever get on a Monday (and in some cases, sadly, EVER). Cosponsored by the hotties at the NYC Sex Bloggers Calendar (www.sexbloggercalendar.com to benefit www.sexworkawareness.org). Free calendars! Signed! (The theme for the 2010 calendar, in production now, is sexual freedom -- yay NYC Sex Bloggers!)

Open to everyone 21+ -- please pass it on.

How much: FREE, but we have a bar guarantee to meet, so have a drink, and donations will be gratefully accepted for the Center for Sex & Culture -- no amount to big or too small, and tax-deductible!

As most of you know, Elizabeth has proposed a panel for SXSW Interactive 2008 called Pink Ghetto Blasters: Destigmatizing Sex via Online Community Building which she'll moderate with me, Lux Nightmare, Violet Blue, and Rachel Kramer Bussel as panel members. The online voting process is now drawing to a close; it ends Friday, September 21 at 11:59 PM, Central Time, so as of this writing, that gives us a little less than 36 hours to get all our friends to vote for us. Voting is easy; just go to the link for the panel above, go through a quick registration process, and give us five stars. That's all.

That depends: It will only be a SXSW panel if enough people vote for it, so head over to our SXSW panel picker page and vote! (You'll need to register there to vote, but I promise you it isn't a terrible process, and it's not like you'll have to remember the password for long!)

SXSW (which stands for South By Southwest) is a week-long annual music, film and "emerging technologies" festival that takes place in Austin, TX. The SXSW Interactive festival focuses on the emerging technologies part.

These photos are just a sampling from Viviane's Flickr set. Thanks Viviane!

Me, with co-founder Chris Hall and Rachel Kramer Bussel

Audacia Ray, Lux Nightmare and Rachel Kramer Bussel

I'm sleepy and exhiliarated after our "coming out party" last night. It was really amazing to meet so many friends of Sex in the Public Square face-to-face, in one place and at one time! Your enthusiasm for this project was palpable, and I can't wait to see where that energy takes us.

Slowly throughout the day today and tomorrow we'll be getting pictures together, so if you took any you want to share send them along to me at elizabeth at sexinthepublicsquare dot org or drop me a link to your Flickr page or just let me know where to find your shots.

Here are just a few to get you started. They're of our fabulous speakers, who I really can't thank enough for honoring our project by sharing their work. You really did demonstrate all the different kinds of things we want this site to accomplish!

Lux Nightmare's exploration of the pink ghetto...

Here's the poster for our "Coming Out" party. (Yeah, it's the same party we've been talking about. We just decided "coming out party" sounded better than "launch party. Don't be confused!)

You're coming, right?

(Click on the image for your own poster-sized copy. It's a PDF, so you need Acrobat or something similar.)

Rachel Kramer Bussel is an unavoidable presence in the New York City sex and literary scenes. The woman is an absolute whirlwind of activity; she always has something new in the works, and anyone who's scanned the erotica section of their local books has seen her name a lot, on the spines of books like She's On Top, Up All Night, and Caught Looking. I swear to god the woman is popping some kind of literary Viagra. In addition to all her writing and editing, she also runs a monthly reading series on Manhattan's Lower East Side called In the Flesh.