Projects
Men in Bed: Women Writers
on the Male Sexual Experience
This groundbreaking anthology, edited by Stacy Bierlein, Kat Meads and Cris Mazza, investigates the sexual experiences and identities of male characters as envisioned by female writers.
Throughout history, male writers from D.H. Lawrence to Phillip Roth have defined sex in literature, including female sexuality. Rare examples of women writers' sexual explorations were either suppressed or treated as trivial. While women writers in a post-Erica-Jong era have claimed the female sexual experience for themselves, those attempting to explore sex from a male character's point of view are still often challenged for their so-called lack of credibility, or for trying to push a feminist agenda.
Of course, great works of literature involve writers stepping far outside their own experiences—gender, age, social class, race, nation—to approach a wider envisioning and understanding of the world. In Men in Bed, today's prominent women writers, alongside emerging talent, explore the provocative and historically pertinent sphere of writing sex through the male lens, thereby reaching a greater understanding not only of human sexuality but of literary tradition and the power of the creative imagination.