Susie Bright is the Editor of Best American Erotica series, 1993-2008.
Have you ever won an award of any kind for your writing?
Firecracker Award and Lambda award for Nothing But the Girl (Best Art/Pictorial Book of the year)
Several national bestsellers for BAE, Sexual State of the Union, and Full Exposure.
Have you ever won an award for another one of your “talents”?
I was No. 23 in “52 Things to Love About America,” published by the Star Tribune, right behind tofu pups.
I won my 3rd Grade Spelling Bee.
“Best Sex Columnist,” NY Press.
Somewhere in the middle of UTNE Reader’s 100 Visionaries of All Time.
I had my picture once in the National Enquirer, who called me a "Lesbian Satanist".
How many books have you published?
Twenty-something.
Has any of your writing been produced in popular films or videos?
Yes, I co wrote the American script for the movie Erotique with Lizzie Borden, and I choreographed the sex scene and erotic characters in the Wachowski's Bound. Channel 4 in England made a documentary based on my work called Susie Bright: Sex Pest, which I thought sounded like bug spray.
Has any of your work been recorded in popular music?
In a couple of odd ways, yes. There's this weird punk song that's just called "Susie Bright" even though it doesn't mention me in its lyrics. A classical composer did take a story of mine, called "Blind Sexual", and set parts of it to music for a 100-member women's chorus, who sang it in a Mission chapel in central California. Gave me goose bumps.
Do you have a scandalous or noteworthy theater life? Plays, performance art?
Yes, a lot of it. I was the Jumping Frog of Caleveras County in a federally funded theater troupe that toured the lunatic asylums and nursing homes of the South Bay area. I was the star of my kindergarten school play. I directed and costarred in "Girls Gone Bad," and co-created and starred in "Knife Paper Scissors," both of which were my pre-On Our Backs manifestos about female sexuality and its discontents.
I was an extra in a Bette Midler movie, "The Rose," and paid $100 to scream "sex drugs and rock, and roll" at the top of my lungs. I have a cameo as a bar girl in Bound, snugly fit in a leather corset. I always gravitated toward weird experimental theater groups where you crawl on the stage naked and growl.
Did you graduate high school?
No, and I am SO PROUD of that.
Did you attend college? If so, which one? What was your major?
Yes, from Cal State Long Beach (theater, journalism,) to UC Santa Cruz, Community Studies. My MFA in Creative Inquiry at New College of California.
How would you describe yourself in a phrase, school-wise?
"Occupy the principal's office until he accedes to our demands."
What other occupations do you hold, or have you held, besides being a writer?
bookseller
dishwasher
pot dealer
vibrator store saleswoman
reporter
kindergarten teacher
housecleaner
waitress
actress
editor
factory worker
secretary
McDonald's Golden Girl
labor organizer
Are you now, or have you been a sex worker?
Yes, in and around the porn and sex toy business, mostly as a writer and accomplice to various situations.
Have you ever held Political Office?
No, but I wish I did.
Have you ever worked in a newsroom, or as a news reporter?
Yes. One memory: I did some really creepy reporting on real estate scandals for The LA Weekly where I had to hide in some rich lady's closet to find the "secret" files. I did a lot of political and labor reporting for socialist newspapers like Workers Power and the Red Tide, and various college alternative newspapers like The Long Beach Union.
Have you written for porn publishers or producers? If so, is that well-known to your peers?
Yes, I am one of those type of publishers, and I've worked for many. Everyone knows, there's never been a time when it was private
How old are you?
49.
What is your astrological sign?
Aries sun, Aries rising, Taurus moon.
Are you a parent? A grandparent?
Parent of one teenage daughter.
Do your children and/or parents know about your erotic writing? Have they read it?
Yes, they all know. My father edited practically everything I've ever published.
Have you written and published Poetry?
Yes.
Have you written and published Plays?
Yes.
Has your work ever been banned in a nation, or seized at Customs?
Yes, throughout the United Kingdom and Canada in particular, ever since I started publishing.
Has your work ever been "made an example of" by various people with an agenda?
Constantly, but I've also made an example out of them.
Has you work ever been subpoenaed?
Yes.
Any interesting felonies or misdemeanors you'd like to mention?
A superior court judge in Michigan called me "a menace to society" before he sentenced me, as a teenager, and I always wish he could have seen what I did after that.
When not writing, what are you likely to be doing?
Reading, cooking, sewing, lying around, playing with my family and dog, watching movies, ranting and raving about the news headlines, thinking about how I'd like things to be.
Do you have any noteworthy hobbies, regimes, pursuits, or collections?
People are surprised I'm Susie Homemaker. I wish I could have my own cooking and sewing television show. On the exotic side, I like collecting rare books, magazines, and movies about sex. Surrealist photography, movie posters, avant garde erotic photography-—if I was rich I'd collect those even more seriously than I have already.
Comic Art: Diane DiMassa, Hothead Paisan