You may already be a winner

This past summer, my friend Marilyn and I were nominated, along with writer Susannah Indigo, by the annual Erotic Awards in the U.K., for Writer of the Year. Marilyn won, and we had a great time at what seemed to be their queer sex worker community's big bash.

Perhaps inspired by this experience, and noting the lack of a similar shindig stateside, Marilyn and writer-editor William Dean (his site is cleansheets.com) are thinking of starting up awards for smut writers like me as well as anthology editors and erotica publishers. She's accepting ideas for awards categories and judging procedures, so if you'd like to put in your two cents, email her.

It'll be nice for porn writers to have something to fuss over. I'm not sure we'll gain a huge amount of recognition for it, but at least it will give us a chance to get together once a year, maybe put on a few workshops along with the awards, and develop closer ties. Right now I feel kind of estranged from most of the erotica writers in San Francisco, who rarely invite me to read at their events or contribute to their collections. I don't know why this is, and I guess I've done well enough as it is, but I know it's also nice to have others to talk to about your craft. I've always felt really fortunate to have Marilyn to talk shop with, but she lives 3000 miles away in New York. I wouldn't mind having a few people here to have drinks with.

One up-and-coming writer is Lisa Wolfe. You can read her story "The Amy Special" in the new Best Women's Erotica edited by Marcy Sheiner, and at brilliantsmut.com. She's just starting to get her stuff published, and she's pretty good. And she's a friend too; I'm sorta biased.