Writers on BDSM, fetish, and adult sexual power are not one genre. The shelf runs across a classical philosophy of cruelty, Victorian flagellation smut, twentieth-century French literature, leather-community nonfiction, clinical sexology, mass-market romance, Japanese SM novels, and gay comics. Some write straight erotica. Some write clinical guides or leather history. Some keep changing how the community talks about desire by writing literary fiction that crosses over. People who matter off the page have other biographical indexes. What follows keeps the names and the identifying notes. The readers are adults. Years, people, and books that are not here were not added.
A to F
Solace Ames is an American author of erotic fiction. Laura Antoniou, under the name Sara Adamson, wrote The Marketplace series of slave-contract novels. Pablo Neruda is on a wider map of erotic and intense-desire writing. The source does not give him a separate SM book. Go Arisue is a Japanese rigger and author. Guy Baldwin is a psychotherapist who writes on BDSM and sexuality. Violet Blue is an American journalist, author, editor, advisor, and educator on sex and kink. Gloria Brame is an American sexologist, writer, and sex therapist. Rachel Kramer Bussel is an American author, columnist, and erotica editor.
Patrick Califia is an American writer of nonfiction essays on sexuality and of erotic fiction and poetry, a foundational figure for leather and queer SM politics. Casey Calvert is an American pornographic actress and film director whose adult-media work includes writing or work next to it. Greta Christina is an American atheist blogger, speaker, and author. David Aaron Clark was an American author, musician, pornographic actor, and adult-video director. John Cleland is the English novelist of Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. Oniroku Dan wrote popular Japanese SM novels that were adapted into pink film and Roman Porno. Tess Danesi is an American sex educator, blogger, and writer of BDSM erotica. Tony DeBlase, sometimes as Fledermaus, was an American leatherman and zoologist, a leather cultural figure and a writer. Samuel R. Delany is an American author and critic with major queer work and work that sits near SM.
Anne Desclos, also Dominique Aury and Pauline Réage, is the French writer of Story of O. Vanessa Duriès is the French novelist of The Ties That Bind. Dossie Easton is an American author and family therapist, co-author of The Ethical Slut and of other books on relationships and kink literacy. Stephen Elliott wrote My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up. Melissa Febos is an American writer, professor, and former dominatrix, author of the memoir Whip Smart. Bob Flanagan was an American performance artist and writer whose work dealt with sadomasochism and illness. Maîtresse Françoise, born Annick Foucault, is a French dominatrix and author.
G to M
Mary Gaitskill is a literary novelist whose work keeps hitting power, shame, and erotic extremity. Stefani Goerlich is an American sexologist, author of The Leather Couch and The Leather Chair, co-author with Elyssa Helfer of BDSM and Kink: The Basics, and author of With Sprinkles On Top, on relationships that mix vanilla and kink. Jeff Gord, Jeffrey E. Owen, was a British bondage photographer who also wrote erotic fiction. Tilly Greene writes erotic and BDSM fiction. Matthias T. J. Grimme is a German author and publisher of sadomasochistic literature, including Das SM-Handbuch. Andrei Gusev is a Russian writer and journalist. Hardy Haberman is an American author, filmmaker, educator, and activist in leather and BDSM communities.
Laurell K. Hamilton writes urban fantasy whose series, for a mass audience, include dominance, submission, and erotic power. Janet Hardy is an American writer and sex educator, founder of Greenery Press, and co-author of community books on SM and polyamory. Lee Harrington is an American educator on sexuality and spirituality, and an author and artist. Emma Holly is an American author of erotic romance. Trevor Jacques is a Canadian author, activist, sex researcher, and IT consultant, author of On The Safe Edge: A Manual for SM Play. Maxim Jakubowski is an editor and writer in erotic and crime publishing. Elfriede Jelinek wrote The Piano Teacher and other work heavy with power and cruelty. V. M. Johnson is an American leatherwoman, leather activist, and author. E. L. James, Erika Leonard, is the British author of the Fifty Shades of Grey novels.
Two Alan Mac Clyde bylines appear, and they are not the same person. Both are pseudonyms of unknown authors. Alan Mac Clyde the 1930s novelist is one period-erotica name. Alan Mac Clyde the 1950s novelist is a separate mid-century erotica name. Mistress Matisse is an American dominatrix and writer. Malcolm McKesson was an American author and outsider artist. Midori is an American bondage artist, educator, and author. Lord Morpheous is a Canadian sex educator, author, and photographer. Charles Allen Moser is an American physician, clinical sexologist, sex therapist, and sex educator.
N to Z
John Norman, John Frederick Lange, Jr., is an American academic and novelist of the Gor series. Betty Paërl was a Dutch mathematician, socialist, and transgender rights activist with writing ties to the SM community. John Preston was an American author and editor of gay erotica and leather nonfiction. Carol Queen is an American author, editor, sociologist, and sexologist. Anne Rice, as A. N. Roquelaure, wrote The Sleeping Beauty Quartet. Catherine Robbe-Grillet, as Jean de Berg and Jeanne de Berg, wrote The Image and is a major figure in French SM literature and in that lifestyle. Pam Rosenthal, Molly Weatherfield, is an American author of erotic historical romance. Robert J. Rubel is an American author and an educational speaker on alternative sexuality.
Gayle Rubin is an American cultural anthropologist and a key theorist of leather and sexual subcultures. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was an Austrian nobleman, writer, and journalist, author of Venus in Furs. The Marquis de Sade, Donatien Alphonse François, was a French nobleman, author of Justine, Juliette, The 120 Days of Sodom, and Philosophy in the Bedroom. Ariel Sands is the pseudonym on the sadomasochistic novel Never the Face. Terence Sellers was an American dominatrix and writer, author of The Correct Sadist: The Memoirs of Angel Stern. Elf Sternberg writes erotic fiction online. Gengoroh Tagame is the pseudonym of a Japanese artist of gay SM manga. Cecilia Tan is a writer, editor, sexuality activist, and founder of Circlet Press. Bernard J. Taylor is listed among literary names tied to BDSM; the source gives no more specific title. Claire Thompson writes BDSM erotic fiction. Larry Townsend was an American author and activist in classic gay leather fiction and in the leatherman’s handbook tradition. Kitty Tsui is an American author, poet, actor, and bodybuilder. Alison Tyler is a pseudonym of an American erotica author, editor, and publisher. Mollena Williams-Haas is an American writer, BDSM educator, and actress, and a former International Ms. Leather. Jay Wiseman is an American BDSM author, educator, and expert witness, author of SM 101 and related safety texts.
Read as one shelf, the names still do not make a single genre: classical cruelty, Victorian birch porn, mid-century French literary SM, leather nonfiction, clinical sexology, mass-market romance, Japanese SM novels, and gay manga. The list is a map. The books are the thing to read.
