Susie Bright

Susannah "Susie" Bright (also known as Susie Sexpert) (born March 25, 1958, Arlington, Virginia) is a writer, speaker, teacher, audio show host, performer, all on the subject of sexuality. She is one of the first writers/activists referred to as a sex-positive feminist.

She has a weekly program entitled "In Bed with Susie Bright" distributed through audible.com, where she discusses a variety of social, freedom of speech and sex-related topics. Interviews, book and movie reviews are common, as are letters from listeners. The show generally begins with a monologue on current events. The show concludes with a Letters segment and the catch phrase "Clits up!"

Her website has operated from March 1997 to present and she began her blog in 2004.

Susie Bright was active in the 1970s in various left-wing progressive causes, in particular the feminist and anti-war movements. She was also one of the founding members of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, and wrote under the pseudonym Sue Daniels.

Bright co-founded and edited the first women's sex magazine, On Our Backs, "entertainment for the adventurous lesbian," from 1984 to 1991. She founded the first women's erotica book series, "Herotica," and edited the first three volumes. She started "The Best American Erotica" series in 1993, which publishes to this day. She was the choreographer/consultant for the Wachowski Brothers film, Bound (in which she also had a cameo).

Bright taught the first university class on the subject of the aesthetics and politics of pornography at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California in 1986, and became well-known for her scholarship in sexual representation through her courses on the subject at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Bright was the first female critic of the X-Rated Critics Organization in 1986, and wrote feminist reviews of erotic films for Penthouse Forum from 1986-1989. Her film reviews of mainstream movies have been widely published, and her comments on gay film history are featured in the documentary film The Celluloid Closet. In 2005 she made a cameo appearance in the show Six Feet Under, playing herself.

She has one daughter, Aretha Bright, and lives with her partner, Jon Bailiff. She currently resides in Santa Cruz, California. Her father was the linguist William Bright.

Books

 * Editor, Three Kinds of Asking For It: Erotic Novellas by Eric Albert, Greta Christina, and Jill Soloway, Touchstone, 2005
 * Editor, Three the Hard Way: Three Novellas by William Harrison, Greg Boyd, and Tsaurah Litzky, Simon and Schuster, 2004
 * Mommy's Little Girl: Susie Bright on Sex, Motherhood, Pornography, and Cherry Pie, Thunder's Mouth, 2004
 * How to Write a Dirty Story, Simon and Schuster, 2002
 * Full Exposure: Opening Up to Sex and Creativity, HarperSanFrancisco, 1999
 * Series editor, Best American Erotica, Simon and Schuster, 1993 - 2007
 * Susie Sexpert's Lesbian Sex World, 2nd edition with three new chapters, Cleis Press, 1998
 * Herotica, 10th anniversary edition, with Afterword by the editor, Down There Press, 1998
 * The Sexual State of the Union, Simon & Schuster, 1997, trade edition, 1998
 * Author and co-editor, Nothing But the Girl: The Blatant Lesbian Image, Cassell, 1996
 * SexWise, Cleis Press, 1995
 * Editor, Totally Herotica, Book-of-the-Month Club, 1995
 * Susie Bright's Sexual Reality: A Virtual Sex Reader, Cleis Press, 1992
 * Featured artist, Angry Women, RE/Search, interview by Andrea Juno, Fall 1991
 * Editor, Herotica, Herotica II, Herotica III, Down There Press and Penguin USA, 1988, 1992, and 1994