Wherein Carol Queen comes to NYC and we gather smart people together to drink and talk sex!

I wish I'd marked on my calendar the date I first read Carol Queen's The Leather Daddy and the Femme. That would be the date when something clicked inside my brain and connected the fragmented parts of my erotic and intellectual understanding of my sexuality. Real Live Nude Girl and Pomosexuals cemented my crush on Carol. And then several years ago through a remarkable chain of mutual friends and happy coincidences we got to know each other "IRL". I'm thrilled that now Sex In The Public Square and Center for Sex and Culture can work together on all things sexual-freedom-related. To that end, we're co-hosting a cocktail hour and reading on Monday, June 8 from 6-9 in NYC. The event is free and open to the public (as long as you're over 21). Donations to Center for Sex and Culture are welcomed, and we're counting on you to help us meet our bar guarantee!

What: A Sex-Positive Soiree and Reading

Who: Carol Queen visits from San Francisco, joined by Rachel Kramer Bussel, Elizabeth Wood, Audacia Ray, and Sinclair Sexsmith!

When: Monday, June 8, 6-9 pm (reading will start between 7:30-8, last about an hour).

Where: Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street, NYC 

Why: Carol Queen's coming through town and wants to collaborate with her friends Rachel and Elizabeth to make a space for connecting, schmoozing, touching base, and furthering plans for sex-positive world domination! Her SF nonprofit The Center for Sex & Culture has hosted Rachel Kramer Bussel, worked with Elizabeth Wood on her online community Sex in the Public Square, and has plans to expand its educational and cultural offerings online as soon as we can (if we can't afford NY real estate, at least we can visit you via your computers). Come mingle with your fellow NY sex people and meet some new ones, then enjoy a reading that will surely be more salaciously smart/sexy brain candy than most people ever get on a Monday (and in some cases, sadly, EVER). Cosponsored by the hotties at the NYC Sex Bloggers Calendar (www.sexbloggercalendar.com to benefit www.sexworkawareness.org). Free calendars! Signed! (The theme for the 2010 calendar, in production now, is sexual freedom -- yay NYC Sex Bloggers!)

Open to everyone 21+ -- please pass it on.

How much: FREE, but we have a bar guarantee to meet, so have a drink, and donations will be gratefully accepted for the Center for Sex & Culture -- no amount to big or too small, and tax-deductible!

Readers:

Carol Queen has authored or edited eleven books, including the Firecracker Alternative Book Award winner The Leather Daddy and the Femme. She's staff sexologist at Good Vibrations, the founding director of the Center for Sex & Culture , and has just finished a rewrite of Exhibitionism for the Shy. Visit at http://www.carolqueen.com or come hang out at Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter.

Rachel Kramer Bussel (http://www.rachelkramerbussel.com) is the editor of over 25 sex-related anthologies, including the Best Sex Writing series, Dirty Girls, Spanked, Do Not Disturb, The Mile High Club, He's on Top, and She's on Top. She hosts the monthly In The Flesh Reading Series at Happy Ending, is Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations, and writes frequently about sex, relationships, and pop culture.

Elizabeth Wood is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Nassau Community College. She received her Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1999 for a study of gender, interaction and power in strip clubs. She writes about gender and sexuality, sex work, the use of online social networking technologies to create an Internet sex commons. Her research is published in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography and Feminism & Psychology. She serves on the editorial boards of Women's Studies Quarterly and Sexuality & Culture and is book review editor for Symbolic Interaction. In addition to her academic writing she runs a web site, Sex In The Public Square (http://sexinthepublicsquare.org), for more general discussions of sex and society.

Audacia Ray blogs at http://www.wakingvixen, wrote Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration, directed/produced the award-winning porn film The Bi Apple and the comedic short Dacia’s Love Machine; she's an executive editor at sex worker magazine $pread, as well as a prolific writer, video blogger, and erotic art curator. Currently Dacia is the online strategist at the International Women’s Health Coalition as well as an adjunct professor of human sexuality at Rutgers University.

Sinclair Sexsmith writes Sugarbutch Chronicles: http://www.sugarbutch.net -- a personal writing exploration of sex, gender, and relationships, and attempts to celebrate queer theory, sexuality, gender, culture, and identity in ways that are expansive rather than restrictive, liberating rather than limiting.

Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street, New York, NY 10002 (B/D to Grand, J/M/Z to Bowery, F to Delancey or F/V to 2nd Avenue, http://www.happyendinglounge.com) Between Forsyth & Eldridge. Look for the hot pink awning that says "XIE HE Health Club." (212) 334-9676 T, (212) 334-9492 F (also  www.myspace.com/happy_endings

The Center for Sex & Culture: Founded by cultural sexologist/writer Carol Queen and her partner Robert Morgan Lawrence, the Center for Sex & Culture provides judgment-free education, cultural events, a library/media archive, and other resources to audiences across the sexual and gender spectrum and researches and disseminate factual information, framing and informing issues of public policy and public health. To that end we utilize our space in San Francisco to grow community, inform and inspire. Visit us online or when you come to San Francisco: http://www.sexandculture.org (also on Facebook and MySpace).

For more information: Carol Queen, carol@carolqueen.com