About Erin

This website is me both wild and free- as in writing that ranges from first to rough to final drafts.  I’m mostly edited but not completely. Sex in My City is a blog where I explore the sexual climate of northern Minnesota. Here is my whiteness, my gender, my creative and sexual practices alongside dedication to craft and a disciplined study of imperfections- my own, my home’s and my culture’s.

Writing for me captures both my wildness and my contained parts. Sometimes it feels stifling and too solitary, most days though it is my vehicle to freedom and mad amounts of satisfying fun on a soul-level. Here I’ve wrestled with getting the blog and website “perfect” to release to the public. And I realize this is the antithesis of what my creative writing and SiMC stand for. Exploration is charting a path, giving oneself enough space and time to complete the adventure, or circling back, moving forward in a non-linear way if the first route doesn’t feel right.

There are some shitty first drafts (as writer Anne Lamott calls them) here- unedited pieces, first thoughts and emotions. And there are mostly finished drafts- of SiMC blog posts in addition to poetry and creative non fiction. Feel free to dig in wherever you feel the desire.

This blog is wild- both pristine and unpolished to represent the place I live. Northern Minnesota is beautiful, ambiguous and brash beyond words. The natural environment requires a focus and badAssery I haven’t experienced anywhere else. The culture is both progressive and constantly reinforces the status quo in fucked up ways (see blog posts about Minnesota Nice). This Midwestern mind game plus minus forty degree wind-chill for weeks on end keeps us contained and self conscious. It also renders some of the most conscientious, kind, hard working and steady supportive creative folx I’ve ever known.

I have not chosen this home lightly. Born in Miami, Florida, I moved around often before and after middle through high school in Dallas, Texas. North Carolina and Vermont were my first adult homes. Each place shaped who I am as a white, queer, gender expansive womxn committed to feminist, creative, spiritual, and sexual practices.

As an artist this project speaks to discovering and revealing hidden parts of my self and our shared culture. In certain instances, these posts might illustrate I don’t know what I don’t know (aka blindspots+privilege). In others, I show I know what I know and figure out creative ways to express my love of information, learning and feminist fucking. Knowing is my favorite, "non-knowing" is my nemesis- and something that’s kept me silent for way too long. Thus, I bring all to the website and stand committed to honest, deep, playful, earnest, radical, loving exploration of the climates that have shaped who I am and my quest to know feminist sexual freedom.

I’ve been writing SiMC posts for the last year after applying for and winning an ARAC career grant to develop my artist website and this project! Welcome inside a dream of mine in the making.

Location

Duluth, MN