Tessa Fontaine: The Erotic Epiphany (July 2025)

Writing sex scenes is notoriously challenging. Longing, desire, fantasy, and erotic acts themselves can come across as cheesy, overly mechanical, superfluous, or just plain cringy. And yet, sex is often a part of the story, and in fact, sometimes a crucial tool for a character’s epiphanic awakening. Here, we’ll think about how the erotic encounter induces epiphany, illuminates power struggles, and stands in as an embodied proxy for that which may otherwise be inarticulable. Authors considered might include: Susan Choi, Kate Chopin, Raven Leilani, James Baldwin, Sharon Olds, Miranda July, Alexander Chee, Melissa Febos, and Adrienne Rich.