LEWIS, Marilyn Jaye 1960-

PERSONAL: Born July 22, 1960, in Columbus, OH; married Chong Foun Kee (deceased); married Gaylon Wayne Lewis, May 1, 1993. Politics: Democrat. Religion: "Religious Scientist Practitioner."

ADDRESSES: Home—777 West End Avenue, New York, NY 10025. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer, publisher, film/Webcast producer, and editor.

MEMBER: Authors Guild, National Writers Union, Feminists for Free Expression.

AWARDS, HONORS: Erotic Oscar for Writer of the Year, SFC (United Kingdom), 2001, for Neptune and Surf; New Century Writer award, 2003, for The Curse of Our Profound Disorder.

WRITINGS:

Neptune and Surf (erotic fiction), Masquerade Books (New York, NY), 1999.

(Editor, with Maxim Jakubowski) Mammoth Book of Erotic Photography, Constable Robinson (London, England), 2001.

When Hearts Collide: An Erotic Romance, Magic Carpet Books (New York, NY), 2003.

In the Secret Hours: An Erotic Romance, Magic Carpet Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Night on Twelfth Street: Bisexual Erotic Fiction, Alyson Books, 2004.

When the Night Stood Still: An Erotic Romance, Magic Carpet Books, 2004.

Contributor of stories to anthologies, including The Unmade Bed, Masquerade Books; Batteries Not Included, Diva Books; Wicked Words 3, Black Lace; Unlimited Desires, BiPress; Desires, Amar Mira Press; New English Library Book of Internet Stories, Hodder & Stoughton; Mammoth Book of Erotica (revised), Carroll & Graf; Guilty Pleasures, Black Books;; Aroused, Thunders Mouth Press; Best Bisexual Women's Erotica, Cleis Press; and others.

Author's works have been translated into French and Italian.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Memoir of a Lakota Sioux medicine woman (nonfiction); The Curse of Our Profound Disorder (novel); stories for anthologies; research on the life of Rudolph Valentino; historical novel on New Orleans.

SIDELIGHTS: Marilyn Jaye Lewis told CA: "I write because I go crazy and am filled with despair when I can't express myself. My muses are generally very noisy and insistent, so I have to pay attention to them. I have been greatly influenced by the (old) Southern writers, Harper Lee, Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and Erskine Caldwell. Additionally, I have been strongly influenced by homoeroticism, writers like Jean Genet and Bill Burroughs. Many gay male writers of the last century seemed able to express their sexual personalities in their writings in ways that I found pretty thrilling. They had an honesty I didn't find with most women writers until maybe the … 1990s.

"My parents were very young teenagers when I was born and so I was put up for adoption as an infant. I was raised in one of those dysfunctional, emotional voids and because of that, I developed a very close relationship with God. I believe God created all things (even Science!), and I believe that our sexual natures are part of God's creative energy. I think that when we deny, waste, oppress, compartmentalize, or fear our sexual personalities, we are depriving ourselves of something sacred, an energy that should be teaching us something joyous about reality and the creative impetus to exist. Because of those beliefs, sex is always a big part of my fiction. My characters have sex because people in real life have sex. But I'm also trying to make a point. We shouldn't have to exclude our sexual identities from the whole of our personalities. I try to tell stories that make people feel okay about who they are and what they want."