About the editor:

Greg Wharton is the author of Johnny Was & Other Tall Tales. He is the publisher of Suspect Thoughts Press, and an editor for two web magazines, suspect thoughts: a journal of subversive writing and Velvet Mafia. He is also the editor of numerous other anthologies including The Best of the Best Meat Erotica, The Big Book of Erotic Ghost Stories, Law of Desire (with Ian Philips), Love Under Foot (with M. Christian), and Of the Flesh. He lives in San Francisco with his brilliant Lammy Award-winning honey Ian, a cat named Chloe, and a lot of books.

About the Contributors:

Patrick Califia is a bisexual, transgendered man who is also a prolific author, therapist, and parent. On the far side of his forties, he is a long-time social critic, feminist, and rabble-rouser. The many facets of sexuality (pleasure, gender, deviance, and social control) have preoccupied him personally and professionally for most of his adult life. The second edition of Public Sex, a collection of his essays, will soon be joined by another compendium, Speaking Sex to Power. He is currently working on a book about growing up queer in a blue-collar Mormon family.

Justin Chin is the author of Burden of Ashes, Harmless Medicine, Mongrel: Essays, Diatribes and Pranks, and Bite Hard. His writings have appeared in American Poetry: The Next Generation, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, The World in Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of the Next Wave, and Chick for a Day. He has created eight full-length solo performance works and several shorter works that have been presented nationally and abroad. He has performed his work at PS 122 and Dixon Place, in New York; Josie's Cabaret & Juice Joint, the LAB, Center for the Arts, Artist Television Access, Luna Sea & Southern Exposure, in San Francisco; East/West Players in Los Angeles; the Cleveland Performance Art Festival, Hampshire College and Loyola University. Born in Malaysia and raised in Singapore, he currently lives in San Francisco.

Writer, filmmaker, director, and drag queen extraordinaire, Sky Gilbert, is one of North America's most controversial artistic forces. Founding artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre from 1979-1997, his Dora Award winning plays have been presented worldwide. ECW Press published his collection of poetry Digressions of a Naked Party Girl in 1998, and his theatre memoir Ejaculations from the Charm Factory in 2000. His first three novels: Guilty (1998), St. Stephen's (1999), and I Am Kasper Klotz (2001) were critically acclaimed. He is presently working on his fourth novel (to be published by Cormorant in 2003) and his Ph.D. at The University of Toronto. He also writes a weekly column for Eye magazine.

Francisco Ibáñez-Carrasco; born in Santiago de Chile, migrated to Vancouver, B.C. in 1985, where he acquired his HIV in 1986, his Canadian citizenship in 1991, his doctorate in Education from Simon Fraser University in 1999, and a long drawn appetite for writing. His short stories have been included in Contra/Diction (Arsenal Pulp Press, 1998), Best Gay Erotica 2000 (Cleis Press), Of the Flesh (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2001), and The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica (Carol and Graff Publishers, 2001) and on-line magazines such as SuspectThoughts.com and VelvetMafia.com (2002). His first novel, Flesh Wounds and Purple Flowers: The Cha-Cha Years, was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2001 and nominated for the Regional Commonwealth Prize in 2002. He freelances as social scientific researcher and university instructor in Vancouver, B.C. and serves volunteer time as Co-Chair of the Canadian Working Group on HIV and Rehabilitation.

Marshall Moore escaped from North Carolina in 1994 and now leads a happy, stable, and uneventful life in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the humidity is low, the cost of living is high, and his closest living relative is thousands of miles away. His debut novel, The Concrete Sky, is forthcoming from Southern Tier Editions-Haworth Press.

Felice Picano's first book was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Since then he has published twenty volumes of fiction, poetry, non-fiction and memoirs. Considered a founder of modern gay literature along with the other members of the Violet Quill Club, Picano also founded two publishing companies: the SeaHorse Press and Gay Presses of New York. Among his many award-winning books, are the novels, Like People in History and The Book of Lies. His most recent novel, Onyx, was published to acclaim in 2001. Picano's exhibit "Early Gay Presses of New York," debuted at the ONE Institute in L.A. and will tour the country. San Francisco's New Conservatory Theatre will premiere Picano's new comedy-thriller, The Bombay Trunk.

Andy Quan has been an activist and writer since the late eighties, studying and working in gay rights and HIV/AIDS, and talking about sex, cultural diversity within queer communities, and more. His fiction and poetry have appeared in many anthologies and magazines in North America, Europe, and Australia including many appearances in the Best Gay Erotica series. Born in Vancouver, he now works in Sydney, Australia. He is the author of a book of poetry, Slant, and the Lambda Literary Award-nominated short fiction collection, Calendar Boy, which has been published in both North America and Australia.

Michael Rowe is the Lambda Literary Award-nominated editor of the anthologies Queer Fear and Queer Fear II, and the co-editor of two original vampire anthologies, Sons of Darkness and Brothers of the Night. An award-winning journalist and essayist whose work has appeared in The National Post, The Globe and Mail, and The Next City, Rowe is the author of two critically acclaimed works of non-fiction, Looking For Brothers and Writing Below The Belt. A lifelong aficionado of the horror genre, his essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in The Scream Factory, Rue Morgue, All Hallows, and Fangoria. A member of both PEN Canada and The Horror Writers Association, he lives in Toronto with his life-partner, Brian McDermid.

Simon Sheppard is the author of Hotter Than Hell and Other Stories and the forthcoming non-fiction book Kinkorama. He's also the coeditor, with M. Christian, of the best-selling book Rough Stuff and its sequel, Roughed Up: More Tales of Gay Men, Sex, and Power. His work has appeared in all but one edition of Best Gay Erotica, three editions of The Best American Erotica, four of Friction: Best Gay Erotic Fiction, and over 60 other anthologies, a number of which have "Best" in their titles, too. His second short story collection, In Deep, will be published by Alyson Books in 2004.

Michael V. Smith, an MFA grad from the University of British Columbia, was selected as one of Vancouver's Most Dangerous People by Loop Magazine in 2001. He produces the public sex 'zine Cruising, performs stand-up improv audience-participation nudist drag as Miss Cookie LaWhore, and has made a number of tranny prostitution videos with filmmaker Nickolaos Stagias which toured film festivals across North America. Cormorant Books in Canada published his first novel, Cumberland, to glowing reviews in the spring of 2002.

Matt Bernstein Sycamore is the author of the novel Pulling Taffy (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2003), and editor of the anthologies Tricks and Treats: Sex Workers Write About Their Clients (Haworth, 2000), and Dangerous Families: Queer Writing Beyond Recovery (Haworth, 2003). His writing has appeared in Best American Erotica 2001, Best American Gay Fiction 3, Best Gay Erotica 2000, 2001, and 2002, Blithe House Quarterly, and numerous other publications.

Royston Tester grew up in Birmingham, England. Before moving to Canada in 1979, he lived in Barcelona and Melbourne. His work has appeared in Rip-Rap and Intersections (Banff Centre Press), Quickies 2 (Arsenal Pulp Press), The Church-Wellesley Review, Descant, The Antigonish Review, PRISM International, Malahat Review, New Quarterly, Quarry, B&A New Writing, and Queen Street Quarterly. Tester has a Ph.D. in Modern British Literature. His first novel, Nancy's Boy, and first short fiction collection, Hands Over The Body, are currently doing the publishers' rounds through trail-blazing literary agent Anne McDermid. He lives in Toronto.

Emanuel Xavier is author of the self-published debut collection, Pier Queen (Pier Queen Productions, 1997), the Lambda Literary Award-nominated novel, Christ-Like (Painted Leaf Press, 1999), and the poetry collection, Americano (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2002). He is winner of a Marsha A. Gomez Cultural Heritage Award for his contributions to gay and Latino culture and lives in New York City.