Dr. Carol Queen is a writer and cultural sexologist with a Ph.D. in human sexuality. She is a noted essayist and erotic fiction author whose work has appeared in dozens of anthologies. For more information see her website: www.carolqueen.com. Her newest book, written with her longtime friend Shar Rednour, is The Sex & Pleasure Book: Good Vibrations Guide to Great Sex for Everyone. Come As You Are author Emily Nagoski PhD called it "an inclusive, compassionate, funny, and comprehensive guide to being a human with both a brain and genitals." Tristan Taormino said, "...dedicated to demystifying all the amazing diversity of sex and sexuality[,] Carol Queen and Shar Rednour are the brilliant, bad ass aunts we all need to teach and advise us."
Carol's first book, Exhibitionism for the Shy, published in 1995, explores issues of erotic self-esteem and enhancement and was reissued with new material in 2009.
Her essay collection, Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture, was published in 1997 and reissued in 2002; it is read in university classes across America.
Her erotic stories can be found in several Best American Erotica volumes, among many other anthologies; her erotic novel, The Leather Daddy and the Femme, was published in 1998 and won a Firecracker Alternative Book Award the following year. A “director’s cut” edition with new material came out in 2003.
She is co-editor of the anthologies Best Bisexual Erotica (volumes One and Two), Sex Spoken Here, Switch Hitters, and PoMoSexuals; the latter won a Lambda Literary Award in 1998. She’s also edited Whipped! and two volumes of 5 Minute Erotica, short-short erotic fiction. She has appeared in several explicit educational videos, notably “Carol Queen’s Great Vibrations: An Explicit Consumer Tour of Vibrators” and “Bend Over Boyfriend: An Adventurous Couple’s Guide to Male Anal Pleasure.” She’s the writer and presenter of “G Marks the Spot: The Good Vibrations Guide to the G-Spot and Female Ejaculation.”
Queen works as staff sexologist, company historian, and curator of the Antique Vibrator Museum at Good Vibrations, the women-founded sex toy and bookstore in San Francisco, where she has worked since 1990, and blogs for the Good Vibrations web magazine at www.goodvibesblog.com.
In 2000 she co-founded the nonprofit Center for Sex & Culture with her partner Robert Morgan Lawrence. It's located in San Francisco; see more at: www.sexandculture.org/mission. (And it's on AmazonSmile!)
She has addressed numerous scholarly and professional conferences, including the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, the International Condom Conference, the International Conference on Prostitution, and the International Conference on Pornography; she frequently addresses college as well as general and specialized audiences. In February 2009 she debated the question of promiscuity (“Virtue or vice?”) for Oxford University's debate club, the Oxford Union.
Carol Queen is active on behalf of progressive sex education and sexual diversity. She has been speaking and writing about non-mainstream sexualities, from lesbian to leather, for over 35 years. Her perspective incorporates personal experience, accurate sex information, and informed cultural commentary.
She's working (slowly) on a new book tentatively titled Three Essays on Sex & Culture. Not surprisingly, it will include more than three essays. Why? There's quite a lot to say.
