Each year we receive all manner of literary entries from authors, poets, scriptwriters, and journalists. Then our Literary Curator reads through the submissions to create the Seattle Erotic Art Festival Literary art Anthology. We are honored to have Claire Dietrich as Curator and Editor of the 2020 anthology.
Literary Curator and Editor
Claire Dietrich has been a part of the Seattle Erotic Art Festival for the past four years helping, learning, and being more involved each year as a volunteer, writer, artist, and leader. Artist of several realms, she creates visual art using various mediums (most recently real eggs), store art with paper crafts, and literary art (first novel coming soon). A constant wanderer, she touches down in Washington as home for the moment.
A note from Claire:
For this year’s anthology, I wanted to exhibit a full range of sexuality – sex, kink, gender, and emotions. As with life, these works emotionally range from tantalizing and stimulating, distressing and dejecting, exasperated and sullen, fiery, enticing, bemusing and entertaining, or some combination thereof. I hope you will enjoy the ride through this year’s anthology.
Literary Artists of the SEAF 2020 Anthology
A.R. Bender is a writer of German heritage now living in Tacoma, Washington. He’s written three short story collections, multiple flash fiction pieces, and a smattering of poetry. He’s also seeking representation for his completed historical novel. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking off the grid and coaching youth soccer.
AC Lipscomb – Not a cabbage or something in disguise, AC enjoys normal human activities like eating and breathing oxygen. For a hobby, he infects sugar-rich liquids with genetically engineered fungi in order to render them mildy and enjoyably toxic. He is most definitely not a scout for an advanced alien civilization intent upon conquest. Honest.
Alessandra Albanese (she/her) is an award-winning playwright with a Master’s degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Albanese has been published in the Santa Barbara Literary Journal and Scribendi literary magazine. She was also the 2018 recipient of the Litfin Scholarship for the Theatre Arts.
Alessandro Ludovico Previti is a visual artist, concept artist, and an illustrator from Palermo based currently in Kraków, Poland. Poetry is Alessandro’s passion, and writes about unconventional love, polyamory, fetish, and BDSM.
Alex Slaine – Writer and purveyor of sticky adjectives based in Seattle, specializing in erotic tales featuring strong protagonists with adventurous tastes in a variety of consensual kinks. An advocate for sexual wellness and education, she hopes to bring a new voice to written smut and change the way people think about sexuality, consent, and kinky exploration.
Barbara Wallen is a part time writer, poet, and maker of things. Barbara’s writing wanders from low-key memoir to politically awkward poetry to BDSM-flavored erotic vignettes, most often pouring itself out at inconvenient hours when sleep is elusive. Meanwhile, Barbara’s artisan side flirts magpie-like from one shiny project to the next.
Bill Wolak is a poet, collage artist, and photographer who lives in New Jersey and has just published his eighteenth book of poetry entitled All the Wind’s Unfinished Kisses with Ekstasis Editions. His collages have appeared in the 2019 Seattle Erotic Art Festival, the 2019 Dirty Show in Detroit, and the 2018 Montreal Erotic Art Festival.
Casey Baumann was born and raised east of the Rockies and has lived in Seattle for several decades.
Claire Dietrich – Artist of several realms, Claire Dietrich creates visual art using various mediums, store art with paper crafts, and literary art. Constant wanderer, she touches down in WA as home for the moment.
Chelsea Malia Brown is a 29 year old artist and poet who grew up on a llama farm in central Oregon. Chelsea’s most recent work is inspired by their struggle with chronic illness, and a feeling of being out of control of body, self, and connection to others. Chelsea often depicts the female body in their work, with themes of vulnerability and fear, but ultimately empowerment.
Clea Salar is a bi femme writer and purveyor of fantasy. She lives in an overgrown corner of the Pacific Northwest where she spins stories of a decidedly saucy nature. She likes chai, macarons, and the Oxford comma.
Eirikah Delaunay is a sex Witch who believes desire is a source of transformative power. She writes erotica and offers kink and intimacy coaching. She lives in Seattle.
Gene Clements – Alongside his career as an architect, Gene has been drawing and working on other art related projects since college. Most of his drawings, sculptures, and etchings have included figures and in many cases, groups of figures in erotic situations. Since he retired, Gene has been writing erotica as well, in many cases about older adults for whom lovemaking is a joy and sometimes, a comedy.
Henryk Mrejzek is the Prague based erotic art photographer, writer, publisher, and sexual activist behind the book “Bohemian Taboo Stories“. Bohemian Taboo Stories – Book about people who do something sexy‘ aims to de-stigmatize the of taboo eroticism and human sexuality. The book is a collection of twenty interesting stories of people from Prague, whose job is somehow connected to sexuality, including researchers, historians, actors, artists, performers, writers, psychologists, activists, sexual assistants, university teachers, erotic art collectors, and organizers of fetish, queer or burlesque events.
James Penha – A native New Yorker, James Penha lives in Indonesia. His verse appeared in 2019 in the anthologies: Headcase: LGBTQ Writers & Artists on Mental Health and Wellness, Lovejets: queer male poets on 200 years of Walt Whitman, and What Remains: The Many Ways We Say Goodbye. Penha edits The New Verse News, an online journal of current-events poetry.
Lyssandra Norton is a Pacific northwest based creator of things. Look for them at your next poetry reading, new works festival, or story night.
Maria More – Poet, writer of erotic fiction and erotic voice over actor working in Seattle.
Micah BlackLight can perhaps be described as a defiant, volcanic force of Nature’s creation, determined to create as many different works of art in as many mediums as he can, detonating spirits along the way and leaving trails of empowering, inspiring experiences in his wake, like a spirit boat on the lake of existence.
Nadia Vanilla is an artist from Phoenix, Arizona in the United States. She has always been inspired by the inner worlds of her subjects – what makes her characters tick, what they’re thinking about the situations they are faced with. Her work aims to break down the barriers between the internal world and the external, between the taboo and the “appropriate,” between public and private.
Nora Gause (she/they) is a chef, poet, and corvid lover in Seattle, WA. They specialize in restricted diets, attempted alliteration, and teaching their cat to look at the pretty birdies, but not touch them. Recent works have appeared at CoffinBell.com and in her fervid dreams. They can be found at @gaussianwords on Twitter.
Ophir Reader writes erotica in the Seattle area. Ophir has an unwaveringly optimistic view of the power of the written word, and the pleasures in erotica read aloud. Ophir can be found on FL or FB.
Rachel Stone loves liminal spaces and the in-between: breath between words, where zipper teeth part, lips before a kiss. Rachel uses writing to explore the intersection of sexual identity, power, and fantasy—and to ensnare lovers of course. A connoisseur of footwear, vintage jewelry, and rye whiskey, Rachel writes only when the mood strikes. Email
Randy Hilfman edited the SEAF catalog in 2012 and 2016. His erotic poetry, “The Cunnilingus Chronicles,” appeared in the Summer 1991 edition of the journal “Libido,” and “The Cunnilingus Chronicles: Paradise Revisited” appeared in the Winter 1993 edition. His essay “My Sexual Odyssey: A Father’s Reflections” appeared in “Sexual Lives” (2003). Email
RM Blake is a pen name, allowing the author’s voice to be free of connection to age, race, gender and sexual preferences. RM is a collective voice of love, passion, empathy, and understanding. Artist/novelist, Deamer Dunn, works in many mediums. His erotica prints are stylized photo manipulations. “The melding of sex and love are themselves art.”
Rose Tanglewood is working toward a Master of Fine Arts degree in interdisciplinary arts. Her current work is an exploration of consent and boundaries inspired by the shared stories of online existence as women in relation to the online existence of men who pursue women. She hopes to fuel conversation around these experiences.
Shane Guthrie’s poetry has been alternatively called ‘devastating, humorous, radioactive and amusingly domestic’. Popular topics include: Dealing with Low Self-Esteem, Amusing anecdotes about childhood, why love is really actually pretty hard, why love is really actually pretty great.
Sonja Joy lived 40 fearful years trapped in a carefully constructed hell, not knowing love wasn’t supposed to hurt. Broke free. Spent the last several exploring with a camera, pen and muse, healing along the way. Images and writing inspired by love or the absence of.
Terry Johnson is a founding member of Floating Mountain Poets, a member of the Little Red Studio Poetry Posse. He has been involved with SEAF for 11 years as an art guide, installer, poet and leader of the Wanderlust Tour.
Yeşim Ağaoğlu was born in Istanbul. She has published many poetry books both in Turkey and abroad and her poems have been published in various literature magazines, several anthologies and encyclopedias. Yesim Agaoglu, who has taken part in various national and international literature and poetry festivals, has been translated into many different foreign languages such as English, German, Spanish and Russian.
Yours Truly is the co-founder of The SMUT Project, a femme-centric, kink and fetish based arts and culture organization established in 2017, whose mission is, “to elevate erotic expression in the literary and artistic worlds and to connect the curious to quality works that inspire, delight, and enrich.”
zenKOAL is a poet, performance artist, experimental musician, and occultist living in Portland, Oregon. She is most inspired by the inexplicable. Her writing style is often experimental and unpredictable. Flouting consistent form and formal structure, she frequently incorporates divination, automatic writing, and cut-up techniques in her process.
Zoe Brook is a queer writer in western Washington. They graduated from The Evergreen Stage College. Their pieces Woods Music and Truths were published in the Seattle Erotic Art Festival’s Literary Anthologies in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Look for their story in the anthology Queers Who Don’t Quit, forthcoming in 2020 from Queer Pack.
Readings
And if you’re the type that is more audio than visual, many of these delightful wordsmiths will be performing live readings of their works over the course of the of Festival, along with some special art tours featuring new poetry inspired by the pieces in this year’s exhibition. More info about scheduling as soon as we have it!
Update!
The official Literary Anthology Author Reading of SEAF2020 was held virtually via the zoom platform on Thursday, November 5th. You can watch those readings by some of our authors and poets below.
SEAF2020 Literary Anthologies are available for purchase online via Lulu.com now!