Donna's Picture. Amorous Woman cover
Smart is Sexy

Writing to arouse your mind and your libido



Welcome to my web site! Did you ever sit in a class and wonder if your starchy professor had a naughty secret life? I’m here to tell you the answer is definitely yes! I’m a Princeton graduate with a Ph.D. from Stanford, which I mention not to impress—who really cares?—but to suggest how far I’ve wandered from my earlier path of propriety. Of course, I like to think my new aspirations are just as lofty. I truly believe we need more writers willing to acknowledge that the sexual urge and the erotic imagination are as worthy of a complex literary treatment as anger, jealousy, ambition, or love in its PG-rated form. That’s what I try to do in my work, one story at a time.

My first novel, Amorous Woman, is available worldwide. The story of an American woman’s love affair with Japan, this modern remake of Ihara Saikaku’s classic 17th century novel of the pleasure quarters will change your view of the Land of the Rising Sun—and erotica—forever. Described by critics as “rich with sensual detail, humor, and emotional complexity,” “hard to put down,” and “literary erotica at its best,” Amorous Woman takes you on a trip to a Japan few tourists ever see.

One of my pet projects for 2010 is recording a series of podcasts of my stories and columns-because I just love to purr into a microphone. You can find links on my Aural Pleasures page, which also includes several radio interviews from the literary to the steamy and my reading of my essay “Thirteen Views of Grief” on KQED’s “Writer’s Block,” which is part of a library of readings by such literary luminaries Paul Auster, Junot Diaz and George Saunders.

Check out my gorgeous book trailer, with lots of Japanese art and mildly embarrassing pictures of me:


You can also listen to my latest podcast with a steamy excerpt from Amorous Woman. Or you can sample provocative interviews and blog appearances that reveal all of my secrets about Japan, erotica-writing and my mission to change the world one sexy story at a time. You can also learn about my other publications—over one hundred stories and essays that have appeared in journals from The Gettysburg Review to Best American Erotica.

If you’re getting a little hungry, you can feast on my monthly column, “Cooking up a Storey,” about my favorite topics—delicious sex, well-crafted food, and mind-blowing writing—at the Erotica Readers and Writers Association. If you’re a published author yourself, you might want to take a look at my archived 2009 series of columns called “Shameless Self-Promotion” in which I share all the things I’ve learned in my dogged, but often rewarding, quest to promote my novel.

While spreading the word about Amorous Woman has been a very enriching experience, this year I’ve promised myself to return to the more creative aspects of the writing life and hope to have a new novel to show for it in due time. Wish me luck!

You’ll discover more about my scandalous soccer mom—cum—pornographer life and my writing in an interview in the East Bay Monthly, and don’t miss this classic from the vault: Susie Bright interviews me on the topics of geisha, eroticism, and Japan in “Memoir from the Floating World.”

For the latest news, check out my blog “Sex, Food, and Writing”

Amorous Woman

“And so I told him how living in Japan would give him a leisure no mere tourist has, to know the rhythms of the place, a land of tiny poems. In autumn, he’d see the persimmons glowing like huge, orange jewels on their bare branches, then winter’s dusting of snow on blue tile roofs. He’d learn why the old erotic pictures are called “spring prints” — because in that season the air is as soft as a lover’s whisper––and he’d sigh at the perfect coolness of iced barley tea slipping down his throat on a wilting summer afternoon. As the year passed, he would become part of it. The neighbors would stop staring and start to nod a greeting, and one day the tiny old lady in the gray kimono at the snack stand would wrap up his regular order of red-bean-and-rice balls before a word was spoken, and she’d flash him that first gold-toothed smile, and he’d be happy all day. It’s like someone’s given you a whole other life, I told him, an extra life, to live for a while.”