A piece of mine was selected for this year’s Seattle Erotic Art Festival’s Literary Anthology.
I’m proud of this year’s story. It features a lot of the elements I’m really enjoying writing right now, queerness, bargains, nature, and fresh starts. I love the images I imagined when I wrote this piece, and if I’m ever so lucky as to inspire visual artists with my work, this is a piece I would love to see brought to life.
The festival is April 29th to May 1st in Seattle, and there’s always awesome art and performances featured, and the anthology will be available there for purchase. I’ll be reading on the mainstage Saturday the 30th between 5-6pm. I’m very excited, it’s going to be the largest group I’ve read for in person.
You can find more information at these links about The Festival and the schedule. You can purchase the anthology itself here on Lulu.com. There are links to previous year’s anthologies that also feature my stories on Find My Work.
I find a lot of joy in learning about concepts in sex, sexuality, and pleasure, and I think it’s an incredibly important topic to discuss and have present in our culture. I’m glad that I get to experience SEAF, and be part of the learning and growth and visibility and joy that I want to see flourish in our communities around all things erotic.
I’m beyond excited to announce that the anthology Queers Who Don’t Quit, in which you’ll find my piece So She Chose, is available now for preorder on Amazon! It releases on the 15th of July, and I’m so thrilled to be included in this collection of queer short stories. I can’t wait to read the other stories, and for you to read mine.
Queers Who Don’t Quit Cover Reveal From Sept
I’m incredibly proud of this piece, and I’m very happy it found a home in with Queer Pack.
Thank you to Queer Pack for this opportunity, and to you, lovely void, for supporting queer writers, publishers, and resilience.
I support the protesters making their anger, their grief, and their voices heard. Too many black lives have been lost to police violence and brutality, with too few consequences. White supremacy has been comfortable in this country for too long, insidious in every authority, police force, and level of government. I condemn every violent, unjust, racist action taken by officers before, during, and after these protests. Black lives are more valuable than any amount of property damaged.
I have no need for anyone who disagrees. The first Pride was a riot, started by trans women of color, Marcia P Johnson and Silvia Rivera. Happy fucking Pride.
I’ve donated to these organizations, and these are few of many. Support protesters every way you can.
Riots brought us every freedom and right we enjoy.
I will always strive to improve my writing and free it from racism, transphobia, homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, fatphobia, whorephobia, and ableism every moment I have. Hatred, bigotry, and discrimination will not be allowed here.
I’m excited to announce that I have a piece in Seattle Erotic Art Festival’s 2020 Literary Anthology! I’m honored to be included in this awesome collection for another year, and I can’t wait for you to read Glass.
The festival dates are currently TBD. You can find more info on the Festival Here. It’s always a lovely experience, and I hope to see you there!
Stay tuned for purchasing info for the 2020 Anthology. You can also see my previous pieces in the 2019 and 2018 Anthologies.
I love that there are so many ways for people connect with sexuality, sensuality, sex, and erotica. I am so proud of the paths being forged towards a more free, educated, and consenting society. I think it’s incredibly important that those aspects of ourselves are not silenced or hidden.
Thank you, for however you support erotic arts, sex education, or LGBTQIA+ rights.
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I don’t know what the next month will bring, or whether I’ll be able to attend in person, but I wanted to allow myself a moment still to celebrate this small moment. Without even beginning to take into consideration the tremendous losses our community is facing and that fear that comes with it, my world has been turned upside down from the practicalities, and the economics of social distancing and shutdowns. My world is filled with art and creatives, in my work as a stagehand, in my writing, in my community of queer artist friends. Art as a part of economy isn’t often acknowledged to be as vital and entwined with our society as it is. My world feels like it’s crumbling, and I haven’t even been hit with the impact yet.
Please, keep building and protecting our communities. Wherever you have space, support art. Support writers, theaters, studios, artists, creators, and all the people who work in the shadows to make magic for the world. Keeping art present will help us heal.
My piece Festive Flannel has been included in an anthology of queer holiday flash fiction called Gay Apparel!
It’s a baby of Twitter verse and “hey what if?” There’s a bunch of lovely diverse stories, and I’m delighted to be included, and for you all to meet Ella and Zion, as they unpack their own holiday traditions and be adorably gay.
Each contributing author is in charge of distribution based on their own requirements, usually donations to themselves or charities.
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To get a copy from me:
Select a tier including Gay Apparel reward on my Patreon
Or donate at to RAICES and send proof to me at zoebrook.writer @ gmail.com
To get a copy from another contributor, check out this Twitter Thread. (Follow the other authors, and myself, when you get there!)
I’m excited to announce my poem Truths will be included in Seattle Erotic Art Festival’s 2019 Literary Anthology!
I’m excited to announce my poem Truths will be included in Seattle Erotic Art Festival’s 2019 Literary Anthology!
See My Art Seattle Erotic Art Festival April 26-28 2019
I’m
honored to share pages with the other talented authors who make up
this work, and I look forward to seeing the awesome collection of
visual art the festival has chosen.
I hope you’ll consider supporting erotic art in Seattle by purchasing a copy of the anthology, (On Lulu, or Amazon) and by attending the festival itself. I’ll be there if you want to say hello; it’s lovely meeting people who are enthusiastic about erotic arts or sex education.
I
want to take a second to revel in the small victories. 2018 had
several awesome writing moments for me, which was quite affirming.
Whether by coincidence or reward, I’ll take it.
Early in the year I was a “slushpile” reader for the WRITE CLUB Contest, and I got to read through all the fantastic 500 word submissions. I was really intrigued to see how the audience interacted with the stories once they were posted. It was a good experience, and a lot of fun.
In April, an excerpt from my 2017 Nanowrimo project was published in the Seattle Erotic Art Festival’s Literary Anthology. I attended the festival and participated in their Wanderlust Poetry tour, where accepted authors were able to see the accepted artwork and write poetry to read during the tour. My poem Confidence Talks, a response to the piece Flauntleroi, was featured on the artist Hooligan Lili’s website.
I made a wholly under-prepared presentation, Talk Sex Positively Now, at Olympic College’s Diversity Conference in June and talked about consent and sex positivity basics. I would love to improve my skills in presentations and preparations, as I enjoyed the opportunity it gave me, but I struggled to pull everything together and make it a worth while conversation.
I participated in the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Contest for the second year. I’ve not made it past the second round, but I’m proud of the stories and ideas I’ve come up with through their prompts. Keep My Memoriesand Me Too were my 2017 entries.
I attended Willamette Writers Conference in August, did a few pitches, a manuscript critique, and went to as many sessions as I could. As always, it was a wonderful experience. Ijeoma Oluo, Vivek Shraya, and Charlie Jane Anders were amongst the fantastic keynotes, and I was delighted to see more queer authors and diversity topics in the session line ups. I learned a lot from my pitches, and the critique was awesome. I came away with more knowledge and ideas on how to further my writing and my current work in progress.
I got to read Sensational Aileyat Salon of SEAF: Explore Written Erotica. It was a ton of fun visiting their new gallery space and listening to the other author’s readings.
Yesterday Not A Pipe Publishing posted my story Guard Crow as part of their #TheYearofPublishingWomen short stories series.
I’m thrilled and honored to be a part of their year. I was lucky enough to hear their presentation at Willamette Writers Conference a few months ago, and I can say that I’m really glad to see the work they’re doing and even prouder to be a part of it.
I hope you’ll take a moment to send them some love, check out what they’ve done for the Year of Publishing Women, and of course, read my story; Guard Crow.
A couple weeks ago I got the opportunity to present Olympic College’s 5th Annual Diversity Conference. This was the first presentation I’ve done outside of school, and there was unsurprisingly a lot of procrastination involved. I wanted to take a moment and share some things about my topic, and what I learned during this experience.
I’m on the official schedule. And I have a ribbon!
“Sex education, sex positivity, consent, and bodily autonomy are ever important in this era of media addressing sexual harassment and accountability so prominently.
In this talk we’ll go over basic terms refining sexuality discourses, highlight the importance of sexuality inclusive social justice work, and give participants practical ways to advocate for healthy discussion of sexuality in their daily lives.”
When I wrote this description I had a lot of goals and expectations for myself, a lot of which got much simpler because of my inexperience in preparing for and executing a presentation. By the time conference time came, my main goal was to talk about the connections I was making between the tools used in social justice work and advocacy related to sex and sexuality, and ways to apply these tools more broadly.
On the day itself, I went over a collection of terms and ideas I enjoy thinking about, or that particularly frustrate me as the case was for several, played a video about Jacqueline Boxx (linked below) as an example of where there’s more work to be done, showed off some of the people I’ve found most interesting in my own learning, and mercifully my lovely participants had a wonderful discussion that interestingly took a parental approach focus. Though, there were quite a few interesting tangents and questions that I’ll be considering for my future projects.
Some Cool People Doing Cool Things
Starting Point
I also got some really nice, and constructive, feedback. I have some ideas for where I want to go next, and what things I need to keep in mind for next time.
I’m incredibly happy that my topic was interesting, and that I got such positive feedback as motivation to keep pursuing it. I know I’m not the only person working on similar topics, and I’m looking forward to discovering new details and timing that make my thinking valuable contributions. I know I’m going to be writing more on the ideas I explored and my slightly haphazard way of learning them, but I make no promises for swift products.
As for the nitty gritty on the presentation side, I need more practice speaking itself. This is given. I need to be better about making time to prepare, and refine. (Basically, the opposite of procrastination.) I also want to include more points to include consent and actively build on the accessibility of my projects.
All in all, I had a wonderful experience, I learned a lot, and met some really awesome people. It great to build on my previous experiences at Olympic College’s Diversity Conference as an attendee, and I’m excited to keep working on more formal, academic-ish, researched work.
As part of my participation in the Seattle Erotica Art Festival this last week, I joined a poetry art tour called Wanderlust. Participating writers got to look at the gallery of visual art and write pieces responding to artworks they found inspiring.
Well Hooligan Lili, the artist for the work I chose, saw my writing and has featured my poem on her website!
I’m honored that my writing resonated so positively, and it’s amazing to see my work in awesome new places! I’m so happy we got to talk about art and inspiration.
To read my poem, and see Hooligan Lili’s fantastic artworks, visit Hooligan Designs!
Zoe Brook 