miscellany

Call for Submissions: Lesbian BDSM Erotica Anthology

As if the project (re)launch of Top Hot Butches wasn’t enough, I’ve got some other exciting news: I’m going to be editing an anthology for Cleis Press focusing on lesbian BDSM erotica!

I adore Cleis, I’ve been following their catalogues for years and I frequently jump at their new titles. They’ve published many of my short stories in other anthologies, and I am thrilled to be working with them as an editor. It’s a new venture for me! And I hope it goes well.

There is definitely a lack of the dirty stuff out there—so many of the erotica anthologies I pick up lately have lacked kink. And hoo boy I’ve been reading a lot of erotica lately. Did you know I am now the lesbian erotica editor for the Lambda Literary Foundation’s recently relaunched website? True story. I’m doing a quarterly roundup of the current lesbian erotica, so I’ve been getting all sorts of fun packages in the mail, but unfortunately most of them are just awful and I really hope the authors intended the book to be a joke. But if I can’t tell, then it wasn’t exactly a successful joke.

I can’t wait to turn up the dirty stuff and stick it all out there in a book with actual pages that you can wank off to—that’ll be a nice change from cuddling up to your laptop in bed, or wanking off at your desk, hmm?

A note about the word “lesbian” … it is pretty much necessary to use that word in the publishing world. So it was kind of not negotiable. I don’t feel great about it, and while I don’t not identify as a lesbian, it certainly wouldn’t be my first sexual identity label of choice (I tend to call myself queer).

Ultimately, though, it is an anthology focused on female characters, but any and all gender expressions are welcome (and encouraged!) to be represented in this anthology—cis women, trans women, and genderqueer characters who identify with the lesbian community. I will absolutely consider stories with trans men in them, assuming they identify with the lesbian communities, but know that the publisher has the final say over the manuscript and I’m not too certain how they would treat that.

If you’re a writer, please do submit a story. You don’t have to be a published writer, you don’t have to have any credentials, what matters is the quality of your story. You’ve got a few months to come up with an awesome scenario and send it in to me … really looking forward to reading all the submissions.

Please forward this call widely.

Call for Submissions: Lesbian BDSM Erotica Anthology [Title TBA] To be published by Cleis Press in fall 2011

Editor Sinclair Sexsmith is looking for hot, sexy, well-written stories about kinky sex between queer women, from bondage scenarios to power play to role play to sadism and masochism to sensation play for a new anthology of lesbian BDSM erotica. Looking for characters with a range of age, race, sexual experience, gender identity and gender expression: butch, femme, genderqueer, gender-non-conforming, dapper, and others will all be considered. Cis women, trans women, and genderqueer characters who identify with the lesbian community are welcome. Stories should have strong literary voice, characters, tension, and rising action. All characters must be over 18. Prose only will be considered, no comics, graphic stories, or poetry. For examples of what I am looking for, see Tristan Taormino’s collection Best Lesbian Bondage Erotica.

Payment: USD $50 and two copies of the book upon publication.
Deadline: January 1, 2011
Unpublished stories preferred.

How to submit: Send your story in a Times New Roman 12 point black font Word document (.doc) with pages numbered of 1,500 to 5,000 words to lesbianbdsmerotica@gmail.com. Double space the document and indent the first line of each paragraph. US grammar required. If you are using a pseudonym, provide your real name and be clear under which you would like to be published. Include your mailing address and a 50 words or less bio in the third person. Publisher has final approval over the manuscript.

About the editor: Sinclair Sexsmith runs the award-winning personal online writing project Sugarbutch Chronicles: The Gender, and Relationship Adventures of a Kinky Queer Butch Top at www.sugarbutch.net. With work published in various anthologies, including the Best Lesbian Erotica series, Sometimes She Lets Me: Butch/Femme Erotica, and Visible: A Femmethology volume 2, Mr. Sexsmith also writes columns for online publications and facilitates workshops on sex, gender, and relationships. Find her full portfolio and schedule at www.mrsexsmith.com.

Published by Sinclair Sexsmith

Sinclair Sexsmith (they/them) is "the best-known butch erotica writer whose kinky, groundbreaking stories have turned on countless queers" (AfterEllen), who "is in all the books, wins all the awards, speaks at all the panels and readings, knows all the stuff, and writes for all the places" (Autostraddle). ​Their short story collection, Sweet & Rough: Queer Kink Erotica, was a 2016 finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and they are the current editor of the Best Lesbian Erotica series. They identify as a white non-binary butch dominant, a survivor, and an introvert, and they live outside Seattle as an uninvited settler on traditional, ancestral, & unceded Snoqualmie land.

16 thoughts on “Call for Submissions: Lesbian BDSM Erotica Anthology”

  1. Gold says:

    Would you accept comic submissions? Comic as in, paneled sequential art, not comic as in funny. I’ve always wanted to do something like this, but I don’t write prose.

    1. Sadly, no, I don't think so. It doesn't say that in the call? Damn, I've got to edit it. I'll double check with the publisher though, to make sure.

      BUT I highly recommend checking out Salacious mag—the first one is coming out soon and I think it will be very visual, and seems like an awesome project. I suspect they'll keep going, so watch for the calls next time.

  2. Gold says:

    Didn’t think so :) Thanks for the advice!

  3. Very cool! Looking forward to concocting a submission for this.

  4. Viviane says:

    This is so cool! I’ll repost it soon. xx

  5. Vic Hunt says:

    It’s rare that I write porn, but I’m excited about perhaps churning something out for this project. I tend to self-edit a lot as I write, so the hard part of writing porn is staying focused on finishing the writing instead of abandoning the story half-way through to wank off! :-p

    But also I wanted to point this out… You said, “…any and all gender expressions are welcome (and encouraged!) to be represented in this anthology — cis women, trans women, and genderqueer characters who identify with the lesbian community.”

    Err… isn’t that sentence a little contradictory? It looks like you’re clarifying “any and all gender expressions” as these three gender expressions: “cis women, transwomen, and genderqueer characters.” (And then with your caveat about transmen.) So… you’re basically saying that any gender expressions EXCEPT cis men are welcome and encouraged, and as long as they identify with the lesbian community.

    I guess I’m nitpicking at your words now, and I suppose it’s not really that big of a deal… but perhaps you said “any and all gender expressions…” in an effort to sound especially open and accepting, because that’s what’s expected of most things in the queer world these days. But it probably would have been more accurate and concise to say “characters who identify with the lesbian community.” No one would expect to see a cis-gendered man as a primary character in the stories, so why not come right out and say that? It’s OKAY that you don’t want cis-men as characters in the anthology — it’s a lesbian book after all! This is one of those cases where it’s fine to be a little bit exclusionary, and if there are people who are incensed about the exclusion of cis-male characters in a lesbian erotica book… then I think they probably need to take themselves a little less seriously!

    1. I see what you’re saying. I was using “gender expression” as different than “gender identity,” meaning that any type of gender expressed on characters who are lesbian-identified are welcome. But I can see how that’s a bit confusing. And you’re right, of course it’s alright to exclude men, especially cis men but it will be a rare case to include a trans man in this anthology also, as it is a lesbian anthology.

  6. Vic Hunt says:

    @MrSexsmith: ahh, yeah… now I can see how you were making the distinction between “gender expression” and “gender identity.” Sometimes the lingo can be confusing even for those of us who try to pay attention to it!

  7. sam says:

    ugh, I cannot wait for this! hurry please ;)

  8. Please look at this website blog and let me know if this is what you are looking for. It is my attempt at it and still new to writing.

Leave a Reply to Vic HuntCancel reply