I believe one of the
aims of art is to disturb, to stop people in their grooves long enough to laugh or get pissed or try on another point of view. I am drawn to the wisdom of the outsider character, who has an idea of what the standard rules are, but who chooses to take them with a salt lick.
I'm interested in riding the line between the sacred and the profane, in erasing the artifice of mindspiritbody division. Much of my writing offers sex, some in a distinctly non-erotic way, because sex is rarely "just sex"--it is frequently about power, longing, comfort, relationship. While I recognize a broad spectrum of sexualities and relationships, the comparison/contrast of conscious sadomasochism (among leatherfolk, for instance) with the psychotic subconscious roles played out by so-called "normal" people is of great fascination to me in particular.
When I entered the Chicago Eagle (a leather bar) in the mid-1990s, it was a kind of homecoming--a quarter of the world that made sense to me in a way that Methodist church and Catholic high school and dysfunctional family never did. The notion of consent pervaded everything and I became interested in what we consent to on a daily basis, without ever realizing there are alternatives.
I've additional
stories published or forthcoming in many journals, including:
The Everyday Gay
IsGreaterThan.net
Susurrus
CafeIrreal.com
OutsiderInk.com
(Artist Spotlight)
Zahir: Unforgettable Tales
The2ndHand.com
Gertrude
Sleepwalk
Mobius
Dyversity
(UK)
International
Drummer
Bad Attitude
My poetry,
articles, and essays have appeared in The Windy City Times
Pride Literary Supplement, PoeticVoices.com, Sandmutopia
Guardian, and the Third Side Press anthology, The Woman-Centered
Economy.
I am a Certified
Story Workshop(R) Director and a former Artist-in-Residence
at Columbia College. (View
CV.) I'm delighted to be a 2nd
Story company member.
My other interests include
crow-watching, mythology, folklore, and magick.