Black Silk
Page 30
I laugh. My pussycat laughs, too, just as I catch a fleeting glimpse in the dulled saloon mirror of a shadow draped in locks of black velvet.
I arch my neck as the single thread of sweat dips between the swell of my breasts. White tears slide down my brown-sugar thighs. The heat is near. I feel it fanning against my back, pushing me out into the night.
About the Contributors
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Anne Atall is a scholar of American and Caribbean literature. She enjoys reading modern fairy tales—erotic and otherwise. She lives in America’s heartland.
Breena Clarke grew up in Washington, D.C., and was educated at Webster College and Howard University. She is the author of the national best-seller River, Cross My Heart, which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection. Her writings have appeared in the anthologies Contemporary Plays by Women of Color and Streetlights: Illuminating Tales of the Urban Black Experience.
Darris is an essayist, book reviewer, fiction writer, lecturer, and public speaker who also works as a college administrator in Washington, D.C., as well as teaching women’s studies courses at local colleges. She lives with her partner and mothers two children.
Eric Jerome Dickey is the New York Times best-selling author of the novels Liar’s Game, Cheaters, Milk in My Coffee, Sister, Sister, and Between Lovers. He is also a contributor to the photography book Mothers and Sons and was one of four contributors included in To Be Real: Four Original Love Stories.
Carolyn Ferrell is the author of the short-story collection Don’t Erase Me and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award along with the QPB New Voices Award; she was a finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discover Award. She is also the author of the novel The Big Book of Fairy Tales. Her work has been anthologized in Streetlights, Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers, Children of the Night: The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1967 to the Present, and The Best American Short Stories. She has been a Fulbright fellow and currently teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College.
Lolita Files is the best-selling author of three novels: Scenes from a Sistah; its follow-up, Getting to the Good Part; and Blind Ambitions. Her novels have appeared on a number of best-seller lists, including those of Blackboard and Barnes and Noble, and Ingram’s Top 50. Lolita, a native of South Florida and current resident of Los Angeles and South Florida, is a student of pop culture well versed in literature, film, television, and music.
Thomas Glave was the first black gay male writer to win the O’Henry Award since James Baldwin. He is the author of the short-story collection Whose Song?—a finalist for the Violet Quill Award.
Reginald Harris is the editor of Kuumba: Poetry Journal for Black People in the Life. His work has appeared in online and paper journals such as Blithe House Quarterly and Obsidian II and anthologies such as Men on Men 7 and His3. A recipient of an Individual Artist Award in Fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council for fiction, he lives in Baltimore.
Donna Hill has penned more than twenty books, Temptation, Masquerade, Spirit, and A Private Affair among them. Three of her romance novels have been made into movies for BET. Dubbed “the queen of black romance,” Hill is also the author of the novel If I Could.
Margaret Johnson-Hodge is the author of five novels: The Real Deal, A New Day, Warm Hands, Butterscotch Blues, and Some Sunday.
Travis Hunter, a native South Carolinian, is a novelist, songwriter, and father. He is the author of the novel Hearts of Men. He lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia, with his son, Rashad.
Jennifer Jazz blends narrative and visual art in Bronx Brazil, a book funded by the Bronx Council on the Arts. It can be found in the Dia Center for the Arts’ Printed Matter Collection in New York.
Robin Coste Lewis teaches fiction writing at Hampshire College. Her writing has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, and GCN: A Queer Progressive Quarterly. Her academic work explores the probable impact of censorship on African-American women writing about sex in the United States during the twenties. She is currently completing a collection of short stories, Telling the Truth About My Experiences as a Body. The story included here, “Sausage Boy,” was written specifically for an OUTWRITE conference panel. Her goal was to write something lewd and lyrical while making as much mischief as possible.
devorah major works in the Poets-in-the-Schools program in California. She is the author of the novel An Open Weave along with Street Smarts: Poems, which won a PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award for excellence in literature.
Janet McDonald is the author of the memoir Project Girl — a finalist for the New Visions Award. A Brooklyn girl who works as an international corporate lawyer in France, she is also the author of the young-adult novel Spellbound and currently at work on a sequel to her memoir, to be titled Paris Girl.
Bernice L. McFadden is the author of the Blackboard best-seller Sugar and the critically acclaimed sophomore effort The Warmest December. Toni Morrison has described her work as “riveting.” McFadden lives in Brooklyn, where she was also born and raised.
Kim McLarin is the author of the novels Taming It Down and Meeting of the Waters.
Kathleen Morris is the author of Speaking in Whispers: Lesbian African-American Erotica. A follow-up collection is forthcoming. Morris’s writing has also appeared in Best Lesbian Erotica and several magazines, including Venus, Women in the Life, and Mosaic. Morris, a native of Mount Vernon, New York, now living in Maryland also facilitates the Erotica Pen, a national workshop series designed to encourage women to discover their creative and sensual powers through the art of writing.
Bruce Morrow is coeditor of the anthology Shade (Avon Books) and an associate editor of Callaloo: A Journal of African American, African and African Diaspora Arts and Letters. A recipient of a Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center Fellowship for Young African-American Fiction Writers, his work has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Speak My Name: Black Masculinity and the American Dream, Men on Men 2000, and Step into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature. He lives in New York City and is at work on a novel.
Andrew Oyefesobi, a native of Daytona Beach by way of Nigerian parents, was voted Prom King and Most Likely to Succeed in high school. He discovered the power and sex appeal of writing while interning at a Beverly Hills talent agency and has been writing ever since. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from Stanford; his work has appeared in Vibe. Oyefesobi is the founder of Urban Prince Publishing and the author of the spicy novel Sin in Soul’s Kitchen.
Elissa G. Perry’s short fiction has appeared in the anthologies Girlfriend Number One and Beyond Definition: New Writing from Gay and Lesbian San Francisco. Her story “Revelation” is excerpted from Ephermeris, a novel in progress. She lives in Santa Monica, California.
Jacqueline Powell is the author of Someone to Catch My Drift. She currently resides in St. Louis, Missouri, where she is working on her second novel.
Kiini Ibura Salaam is a writer, painter, and world traveler from New Orleans. Her short stories and essays have been anthologized in Dark Eros, Dark Matter, and Men We Cherish, and included in African American Review, Essence, and other national publications. She is currently writing a novel, Bloodlines, and a collection of erotica entitled Lust Heals. She lives in Brooklyn.
s smith is a recipient of a Serpent Source Foundation grant, awarded to outstanding artists who are women of color. She has twice participated in the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Writer’s Week. s smith currently resides in Oakland, California, where she is working on a collection of poetry.
Camika Spencer is a native of Dallas, Texas, who was a bookseller at Black Images before she became a writer. After writing two novels that went unpublished by traditional venues, she wrote a third and published it herself. akimac publishing made such an impression in Dallas that When All Hell Breaks Loose was picked up by a major publishing house and became a Blackboard best-seller.
TaRessa Stovall coaut
hored A Love Supreme: Real-Life Stories of Black Love. TaRessa, a native of Seattle, has been a writer since age seven. Her poetry has won awards and appeared in national magazines. Her plays have been produced throughout the Pacific Northwest and in Chicago. TaRessa is coauthor of Catching Good Health: An Introduction to Homeopathic Medicine and author of the young-adult book The Buffalo Soldiers.
Cheo Tyehimba is an award-winning journalist and former senior editor and staff reporter of Code and Entertainment Weekly magazines, respectively. He has written for the Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, Vibe, People, and George, among other publications. He is working on Carving from the Rock, a novel excerpted here.
Carl Weber wears the two hats of bookseller and writer. Shortly after he was awarded the Blackboard Bookseller of the Year Award in 2000, he published his first novel, Lookin’ for Luv. He is also the author of the novel Married Men.
Krystal G. Williams was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1965. She received her undergraduate degree from Rice University in Houston, Texas, where she double-majored in English and legal studies. She is currently a full-time technical writer and mother of two. Her motto—”Too many words, not enough paper”—has helped her publish several romance novels, a play for her alma mater, and a planning guide for family reunions. She currently makes her home in Texas.
Jacqueline Woodson is the award-winning author of many novels and picture books for young readers, including the Maizon trilogy, The Other Side, Lena, I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This (a Coretta Scott King Honor Book), The House You Pass on the Way, From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun, If You Come Softly, and Miracle’s Boys (also an Honor Book). Among her other titles are Autobiography of a Family Photo: A Novel and the anthology A Way Out of No Way: Writings about Growing Up Black in America.
Bil Wright, recipient of a Millay Fellowship, is a fiction writer, playwright, and poet. His debut novel, Sunday You Learn How to Box, was published to much acclaim. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Men on Men 3, The Road Before Us, Shade, and many other anthologies. His plays have been produced in the United States and Germany and published in the anthology Tough Acts to Follow. He lives in New York City.
About the Editor
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Retha Powers is a writer and editor whose journalism and essays have appeared in national publications such as USA Today, Essence, Glamour, Ms., and the anthology Skin Deep: Black Women and White Women Write About Race. She serves as executive editor of Quality Paperback Book Club, a division of Bookspan, and lives in New York City.
Acknowledgments
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The editor wishes to express gratitude to the writers herein who conjured up passionate and thoughtful tales told through the lens of the erotic. She also wishes to thank her agent, Neeti Madan, for her tremendous support and friendship, and her editors Amy Einhorn and Sandra Bark. Kathleen Morris’s referrals to many fine writers and the creative input of Christopher Nickelson were also invaluable.