Dr. Carol Queen is a writer and cultural sexologist with a Ph.D. in human sexuality. She is a noted essayist whose work has appeared in dozens of anthologies. 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. Her first book, Exhibitionism for the Shy, published in 1995, explores issues of erotic self-esteem and enhancement and will be reissued with new material in 2009.
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 and Chiel Cultural Officer 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.goodvibes.com.
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 will debate the question of promiscuity (“Virtue or vice?”) for the Oxford Union at Oxford University, England.
Carol Queen is active on behalf of progressive sex education and sexual minority issues. Perhaps most closely affiliated with the bisexual and sex work communities, she has been speaking publicly about non-mainstream sexualities, from lesbian to leather, for over 25 years. Her perspective in addressing sexual diversity incorporates personal experience, accurate sex information, and informed cultural commentary. For more information (including CV and bibliography) see her website: www.carolqueen.com.
Dr. Robert Morgan Lawrence has 35 years of experience in the field of human sexuality. He has a Doctorate of Education degree in Human Sexuality from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality (2000) and holds an additional doctoral-level degree in health care, which informs his sexological perspective. He has served as a sex industry consultant, educator and academic author and has lectured both nationally and internationally about human sexuality and health. He has been an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Clinical Sexology, the Chapter Secretary for the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, and a member of the San Francisco Coalition for Healthy Sex.From 1979 Lawrence served in volunteer positions on the switchboard and training staff, and then as training coordinator, of San Francisco Sex Information (SFSI); he shared the latter position with Dr. Queen. In the early 1990s they left the organization to pursue their own projects, traveling and teaching together widely as they developed the Center for Sex & Culture. He serves as the Center’s Board president.
Lawrence has covered many sexuality-related topics during many years of public speaking. He has been a guest lecturer at San Francisco State University, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Sonoma State, Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, and the University of Chicago, and has appeared in places as far-flung as Amsterdam, London and (on a 1994 Ford Foundation direct grant) Beijing. Lawrence and Queen have produced safer-sex education events of many kinds, including the live Masturbate-a-Thon that has become a significant fundraising event for the Center for Sex & Culture. He has been active as a safer-sex educator since 1980.
Robert co-wrote the entry on Bisexuality in the US for The International Encyclopedia of Sexuality, edited by Robert Francoeur (Continuum, 1997). He has also published in the Journal of Bisexuality and has more recently written and published erotica. His work has been published in magazines and books and for many years he was regularly interviewed on radio and television programs worldwide.
Since 1999 Robert has been disabled with a chronic pain condition as a result of a botched surgery. He continues to serve on the Center for Sex & Culture’s board of directors, although he is not able to participate fully in its events and operations and has limited mobility. He makes collage art solo and with Carol, some of which has been shown at San Francisco galleries, most notably Femina Potens.
Although many people who have met him think he is Carol's emanuensis for her character Jack Prosper in The Leather Daddy and The Femme this is not true; in fact Carol makes a point of denying it right here and now. "Robert is not Jack Prosper." - Carol Queen 2008
