Call for Submissions: My Charity Anthology, due May 22

Hi friends,

I've had this pinned to my Twitter account for a while now, but I could still use more submissions, so I wanted to boost a bit more.

I first posted this call last year, and then refined the anthology topic in response to the submissions I received and am looking for a few more stories. Please consider writing something for me. If you'd like to discuss your idea or need more time, please feel free to email me at annabeth dot leong at gmail dot com. <3 <3 <3 I'm posting the call in full below, but you can also find it on the publisher's website here.

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Coming Together: Positively Sexy is a collection of erotica focused on characters living and loving while HSV+, edited by Annabeth Leong. Proceeds benefit the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health, a sexuality education and training organization that works to reduce sexual shame, challenge misinformation, and advance the field of sexuality.

SUBMISSION CALL

Update: In the first submission window for Coming Together: Positively Sexy, many submissions focused on characters living and loving while positive for HSV (herpes). So I've decided to embrace that focus and reopen the call in order to fill out a book all about these characters. I'd particularly love to get more stories including queer men or nonbinary characters, but any story exploring and celebrating the sexuality of characters with herpes is welcome.

Details from the original call are below:

Ever notice that sex ed classes tend to focus on how to prevent STIs, but don't say much about living with them and having a sex life after an STI diagnosis? Erotica, on the other hand, is often written as if STIs don't exist at all.

For this anthology, I'm looking for short erotica and erotic romance about characters who have STIs.

I would like to see a range of experiences represented. Give me characters just opening themselves up to sexuality post-diagnosis, characters for whom disclosure and safer sex practices are a routine side note to whatever sexual fun they're getting up to, and everything in between. Stories must be fictional.

It's a major priority for me to include stories about people of a variety of orientations, body types, races, genders, etc. I'm very interested in stories that engage with stigmas around STIs, but I'm absolutely not interested in stories that perpetuate those stigmas. I'm interested in the realities of sexuality, and it is fine for characters to have backgrounds that include unsafe behavior/murky consent/etc. In the present of your story, however, I want to see characters who are responsible with themselves and their partners. Please use medically accurate information where relevant. Please don't be preachy or shaming.

All sexualities and gender expressions are welcome. Kink is welcome. Realistic contemporary settings only, please.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Stories between 3,000 and 7,500 words are preferred. I will consider shorter stories or stories as long as 10,000 words if I find them truly exceptional.

Coming Together contracts non-exclusive rights to publish, so previously published work is fine, as long as you own the rights to the work you submit. Stories over 5,000 words may be released individually through Coming Together as well, with the sales proceeds benefiting the CSPH.

Please use RTF, DOC, or DOCX format when submitting a manuscript. Include your legal name, pen name, and a working email address at the top of the document. Do not paste your story into the body of your message.

Please use Times New Roman font, size 12, and one-inch margins. Double-space paragraphs and set indentations to .3 – Do not use tabs or spaces to indent.

Please do not submit poetry or memoir.

Direct all submissions to positivelybook@outlook.com and CC submissions@the-erotic-cocktail.com.

Include “Coming Together Positively Sexy Submission” in the header of your e-mail. In your e-mail message, include a two-line blurb for your story (to help with promotion if your story is accepted), and a short biography, no more than 150 words, including your website/blog/social media links if applicable. Please also indicate if your story has been previously published.
Feel free to query if your submission is not acknowledged within 72 hours.

Coming Together is a non-profit organization, and all CT authors and editors have generously donated their talents to various causes. Compensation for inclusion in this work is a PDF contributor copy of the finished product and the satisfaction of knowing you are helping an amazing organization that is working to reduce sexual shame.

Signs that you've read the guidelines make me <3 you. Thanks so much for being interested in this anthology. ABOUT THE EDITOR:

Annabeth Leong is frequently confused about her sexuality, but enjoys searching for answers. Her work appears in dozens of anthologies, including recent editions of the annual series Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Erotic Romance, and Heiresses of Russ: Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction. She is the author of the novel Untouched and the short story collection Liquid Longing, and is the editor of Circlet Press's MakerSex: Erotic Stories of Geeks, Hackers, and DIY Culture. She can be found online at annabethleong.blogspot.com, and on Twitter @AnnabethLeong

Curiosities for the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health

Hey friends! The lovely humans at the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health are having an online auction to raise money for the organization.

There are a bunch of cool things available online—bidding runs until April 30 at 10 am ET. Many of them could be purchased by someone who doesn't live in New England. I wanted, however, to highlight, a few cool things for New England-area folks.

In particular:

Pleasure Pie is offering a Pastie Making or Zine Making workshop!


Melanie Lucash, who is one of the loveliest people you will ever meet, is offering to run a Tea and Empathy workshop!


Ever want to talk to a bunch of smart, kind people about sexual health and pleasure? You could have dinner for two with the entire CSPH staff!


Maybe I'm just fantasizing about cool things I'd like to do myself... There's also lots of art, books, furniture, you name it. You can check out the auction here.

And if you'd like to attend the live event tomorrow (Friday, April 28th from 6-9 pm) in Pawtucket, RI, tickets are on sale here. You can see what will be up for auction here. I will be there! Let me know if you will be, too, and maybe we can say hi in person. :)

This is one of my very favorite nonprofits, and I'd love to see lots of people participate in the auction!

Workshop Cancelled

Just a quick note to say that there wasn't enough enrollment to justify running tomorrow's writing workshop at the CSPH. I'm disappointed not to be teaching it, but I'm open to teaching other workshops in the future. If you were thinking of signing up or would want to sign up for a writing workshop in the future, please drop me a line (annabeth.leong@gmail.com) about what you'd like to see me teach. It would be great to be able to document what people are interested in so I can come up with better ideas for next time. :)

See Me Tonight at Sticky Stories

Tonight, I'll be in downtown Providence at AS220 (95 Empire Street) performing at Sticky Stories PVD IV!

I'm doing a piece called "What I Learned in Health Class," in which I talk about Magic Johnson, tight jeans, and the health teacher who liked to show off her tapeworm specimen. I'm also going to say serious things about how strange it is that it feels so impossible to openly talk about incredibly common conditions that almost everybody gets.

Here's a description of the event as a whole:

Sticky Stories was designed to create a space for you to share hilarious stories from childhood or adolescence (or now if your life is particularly amusing and ridiculous). We look forward to hearing your sticky stories about wet dreams, awkward crushes, embarrassing love letters, coming out stories, sexual debuts, locker room horror stories, menstruation disasters, or what you thought sex was before you knew what sex was and more!

You can RSVP on Facebook here.

You can buy tickets for the event here.

I hope to see some of you there!

When Stigma Stops Writing

I recently wrote a post for Delilah Night about the challenges presented by the book I'm currently taking submissions for, the charity anthology Coming Together: Postively Sexy.

What I didn’t realize was that this book is demanding a different kind of editing skill: convincing and encouraging nervous writers to try their hands at stories that feel risky to them. I have had many conversations with writers who say they don’t know anything about STIs and can’t write about them, only to tell me in the next breath that they’ve had or currently have an STI. I’ve had conversations with writers who say they can’t picture how a story could include mention of an STI and still be sexy. I’ve had conversations with writers who say they are far too worried about the possibility of getting something wrong. I’ve talked to writers who say they mostly submit stories they’ve already written, and they’ve never written a story that includes a character with an STI.

To me, this all speaks to the stigma around STIs, the very stigma that I’m hoping this book can question. I want to make a book that opens up a little space inside a dominant culture that often seems intent on shaming people, a book that offers up a vision that an STI doesn’t have to be the end of a person’s sex life, that it doesn’t have to be a big deal at all. I’m hoping to get some stories from writers who already know that because they’ve lived that experience, and I’m also hoping to get some stories from writers who are learning it through the writing they’re doing now.

You can read the rest of the post here, at Delilah's blog.

You can read the full call for submissions, with all the details, here.

Also, check out Delilah's post about the anthology she's editing, Coming Together: Under the Mistletoe.

And, writers, let's do some good by being bad. :) (An old tagline for the charity erotica publisher, Coming Together).

(Also, the deadline for Positively Sexy has been extended to Oct 1st!)

Lovefool

Tonight, I'll be at Sticky Stories in downtown Providence performing "Lovefool," a piece about my first queer relationship and the awkward way I got into it. You can probably still get a ticket if you would like to come!



One of the major themes of my piece is the way I found myself driven to vulgarity to avoid being dismissed as someone who was just kidding about my desire for women. Here's a very short excerpt:

After the show was over, we went back to class, and I declared, “Everyone wanted to fuck her after that.”

“All the guys,” someone corrected me. I think she was trying to throw me a #NoHomo assist, but a) that expression is gross, and b) it definitely didn’t apply to me.

I shook my head. “Everyone. Including me.”

I was being a pig, I know. That was the only way I knew to expression attraction for women. It felt like anything less wouldn’t be acknowledged, would get softened in everybody’s mind until they heard me saying, “Pam is so pretty and sweet. I’d love to play My Little Ponies with her and maybe braid each other’s hair.”

I'm so looking forward to this show!

Announcing: Coming Together: Positively Sexy

I'm editing another book!

It's going to be called Coming Together: Positively Sexy, and it's an anthology of erotica focused on characters living and loving while STI-positive. All proceeds will benefit the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health, a sexuality education and training organization that works to reduce sexual shame, challenge misinformation, and advance the field of sexuality.

For so many reasons, I'm thrilled that this project is happening.

I love the CSPH deeply as an organization—it is not an exaggeration to say it has changed my life and given me much-needed sanctuary.

And I think this is a subject that needs to be explored. I have read so much erotica, and I can't recall ever seeing a character who was STI-positive. (If you have run across this, I am really interested to know where. Leave a comment or email me!)

Once I realized this lack, it became incredibly glaring to me. I got into writing erotica because I wanted to speak about the unspoken. There is so much revealed in people's sex lives. I am fascinated by the vulnerability and exposure. And yet, in the years I've been writing erotica, I've become disheartened by what I tend to hide. By typically presenting a fantasyland in which STIs don't exist, I have missed out on a huge part of what I think it is our calling as erotica writers to explore.

I want and have always wanted to write about sex, in all its strangeness and beauty and difficulty. I enjoy fantasies, and I am also interested in realities. By picking up on unspoken "rules," and shying away from portraying STIs, I have turned away from writing about the world I actually know.

I remember being diagnosed with HPV when I was in my early 20s and plunging into a morass of shame and confusion. I honestly didn't really know what HPV was or meant—and it felt like I couldn't get the information I needed, no matter how many questions I asked or how many things I looked up. I had such a poor understanding of STIs that I truly believed for a while that being diagnosed with it meant I would have to be celibate for the rest of my life. It is only in the past few years that I have become able to talk about parts of my history like this in a matter-of-fact way, informed by medically accurate information, not overshadowed by crushing shame and a sense of dirtiness.

I got pretty spotty education about STIs in the first place—and I recognize I was lucky to have avoided the abstinence-only approach that passes for "education" in many American schools. I remember most vividly the scare tactics that were used in my health class—the giant pictures of warts and lesions that made them look like dangerous space anomalies. I remember being told to use condoms, but not being told anything about what one might do if one ended up getting an STI or wanting to sleep with someone who had one.

I have cried with shame while disclosing my sexual history with a new partner. I have cringed at the sight of the capital letters HPV highlighted in pink on a form at the doctor's office.

When I was younger (before my HPV diagnosis), I had partners ask (while trying to convince me not to use a condom), "You're a clean girl, aren't you?" As if that was due diligence for STI prevention. As if there was any way to answer that question well or honestly. As if I hadn't already asked to use a condom.

There are also stories that aren't mine to tell, about people I've known who have lived with shame and judgement when I don't think they should have to.

The point of all this is that I'm a person who has lived and loved after an STI diagnosis, and I know plenty of other people who have, too. And I've never seen myself represented in the genre I have worked in since 2008. I have never represented myself in my own genre.

I say that knowing that HPV is common, an STI that is sometimes dismissed as something "everybody" has. What does it say that I've felt so much shame and hesitation about something so common? What does it say that I've never felt safe writing about it?

I came up with the idea for this book late last year, in the midst of some feelings of burnout. For several years, I had been writing as hard and fast as I could, pouring my soul into my stories and also constantly producing them. There were things going on in the erotica industry that were messing with my livelihood and breaking my heart. I found that a lot of my work seemed to be too weird or too queer or too dark or too something. Untouched had come out, and I never anticipated how naked and exposed that book would make me feel.

When I began writing, I believed I had things to say that were important, things that only I could say. Increasingly, though, I found myself abandoning stories, questioning whether they mattered at all.

I took a step back and began to ask myself if I had anything still to say, if I thought I still could do things in this field that needed to be done. After a period of soul searching, the idea for this book came to me. I couldn't convince myself that the world cared about or needed a lot of things I could choose to work on—this, though, was different. I believe that Coming Together: Positively Sexy could make a real difference to its readers, to its writers, and to me, as editor.

Any time my will as an artist has flagged, the answer has always been to go harder, go deeper, expose more. That is all that feels true to me, the only thing I have in the end.

I need and want this book to exist. But I can't make it happen on my own. I need more perspectives than the one I've got. I need a lot of different stories. Maybe what I need is your voice.

You can find the full call for submissions here.

If you have any questions, please email me at positivelybook@outlook.com.

(Also, many thanks to Melanie at the CSPH, who helped me come up with the name for this book!)

Annabeth Leong Goes All the Places

Guys! You have so many chances to see me this month!

On Friday, February 12th, I will be at AS220 in downtown Providence performing a piece called "Lovefool." It's about my first girlfriend, contains Spice Girls references, and is super vulgar (partly because a point I'm making is that people often seem to want to turn attraction between women into something sweet and harmless). Sticky Stories is a really awesome event, and you should come for so many reasons, not just me. Also, you should come to find out what I mean when I say, "I want to braid her hair."

You can buy tickets here.

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If you miss Sticky Stories, though, never fear. You have two chances to catch me at the Fetish Fair Fleamarket in Warwick on February 13th, the very next day!

I'll be reading from some of my kinky work at the authors readings at 10:45 a.m. in room 623 and 8 p.m. in Barrington.

Expect to hear from Challenge Accepted, Heated Leather Lover, The Passenger, or maybe something else surprising! Also expect to shiver with delight at the sight of Laura Antoniou and Cecilia Tan in the flesh and reading to you.

You can get tickets to the Flea here. You can learn more about the event here.

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On February 26th, from 7-9:30 p.m., I'll be in New York City at Bluestockings Books, a radical bookstore and activist center focused on feminism, queer studies, and a lot of other cool topics. I think it is a sign that my life is going in the right direction that I've been invited here. I'll be reading there from "Give and Take" alongside other authors from the 20th anniversary edition of Best Lesbian Erotica. Come count which of us have alternative lifestyle haircuts, and discover which stories turn you on to an uncomfortable degree in a public space! Also, this event is free!

More information about the event is here.

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On March 26th, from 2-4 pm, I will be reading at my beloved Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. It will, of course, be awesome to hear stories from the 20th anniversary edition of Best Lesbian Erotica, but you should come for the world's largest collection of antique vibrators, and the extensive library of books on sexuality, and the oddly cuddly stuffed representation of the herpes virus. Also free lube samples. If that description doesn't make you mark your calendar, I don't know what will.

The address is:
The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health
The Grant Building, Unit 1/Box 11
250 Main Street, Pawtucket RI 02860

This event is too new to have an official listing yet, but it's happening, baby. And if you want to know more about the CSPH, you can visit their website here.

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That's it for now, but there's a possibility I'll be appearing at a certain clean, well-lighted purveyor of sex toys in Brookline, MA, sometime in May. I'll keep you posted.