Big Sex Little Death: A Memoir

Description

Ever wondered why there's no female voice as bold, erotic, unflinching, and revealing as Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, or Philip Roth? There is. It belongs to Susie Bright. From fearful Irish Catholic Girl Scout to gun-toting teenage revolutionary and finally the "The Avatar of American Erotica" (The New York Times) Bright's life story is shaped as much by America's sexual awakening as the national sexual landscape was altered by Bright herself. In Big Sex Little Death, Bright introduces us to her influences and experiences, including her early involvement with notorious high school radicals The Red Tide, as well as the magazine she cofounded in the 1980s, On Our Backs which turned the lesbian and bisexual community upside down before it took the straight world by storm. Explosive yet intimate, Big Sex Little Death is pure Susie: bold, free-spirited, and unpredictable larger than life, yet utterly true to life.

Susie Bright is the author of national bestsellers Full Exposure and The Sexual State of the Union,as well as The Best American Erotica and Herotica series, which ushered in women's erotic publishing. She the host of Audible's In Bed With Susie Bright, the beloved and longest running sex education show in the history of broadcasting. She was co-founder and editor of On Our Backs magazine, and was the first journalist to cover erotic cinema and the porn business in the mainstream press. A progenitor of the sex-positive movement, Bright taught the first university course on pornography, and brought lasting sexual influence to her role in films like Bound and The Celluloid Closet. She has one daughter, Aretha Bright, and lives with her partner, Jon Bailiff. She currently resides in Santa Cruz, California.

"Susie Bright has never been one to shy away from discussing sexuality, erotica, and feminism ... Big Sex Little Death delivers." --Vanity Fair "Susie Bright is the Emma Goldman of our time." --LA Weekly "Best Books of 2011" --San Francisco Chronicle "My 10 Favorite NonFiction Reads of 2011"--Richard LaBonte, BookMarks "BSLD delivers entertaining and influential political/sexual revolution." --Vanity Fair "Rollicking, Vibrant!"--MORE "Deliciously radical." --Ariel Gore, Psychology Today "Heady, hilarious, heartbreaking." --Bay Guardian "One of the bravest and sharpest sex writers of our time." --Salon "How does a cocky woman write such a ballsy memoir?" --Daily Rumpus "Reading Bright is the equivalent of seeing her at your local farmers' market wearing *This is What A Sex-Positive Feminist Looks Like* t-shirt.This is a good thing." --Alternet "The stories she tells are dramatic, violent, passionate-- but it's the writing here that is the most stunning." --SexIs "Characteristically frank, often startling." --Chicago Sun-Times "Titillating, arousing and salacious are words not normally ascribed to a writer's memoir, unless, of course, that writer happens to be Susie Bright." --Larry Mantle, Airtalk