Please join the Black Mountain Institute for a roundtable discussion on extant techniques, controversies, and craft approaches for writing about sex. The program will be introduced by the Director of the Archives and Special Collections at Lied Library, Sarah Quigley. Panelists include the acclaimed writers poet and novelist Vi Khi Nao, memoirist Edgar Gomez, producer, comic-artist, and journalist Tina Horn, and UNLV’s own Director of IGES, Dr. Lynn Comella. This event is part of a series leading up to the launch of a new special collections area at the library, spear-headed by Dr. Comella, on Sexual Entertainment and Sexual Economies of Las Vegas.

Vi Khi Nao is the author of seven poetry collections & of the short stories collection, A Brief Alphabet of Torture (winner of the 2016 FC2's Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize), the novel, Swimming with Dead Stars. Her poetry collection, The Old Philosopher, won the Nightboat Books Prize for Poetry in 2014. Her book, Suicide: the Autoimmune Disorder of the Psyche  is out of 11:11 in Spring 2023. The Fall 2019 fellow at the Black Mountain Institute, her work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. She  was the 2022 recipient of the Jim Duggins, PhD Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize.

Tina Horn is a writer, educatrix, and media-maker. Her book of fetish cultural criticism based on her long-running indie podcast Why Are People Into That?! will be out in 2024 from Hachette. Tina is the creator/writer of the sci-fi sex-rebel comic book series Safe Sex (Image) and the host/cowriter of the phone sex podcast Operator (Wondery). Her reporting on sexual subcultures and politics has appeared in Rolling Stone, Playboy, Hazlitt, Glamour, Jezebel and elsewhere; she is the author of two nonfiction books and has contributed to numerous anthologies including We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival, which she also coedited. Tina has lectured on adult entertainment politics and queer BDSM identities at universities and community centers all over North America, and works as an on-set consultant for theater, film, and television including the dominatrix scenes of Pose. She is a LAMBDA Literary Fellow, an AVN nominee, the recipient of two Feminist Porn Awards, and holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Sarah Lawrence. You can follower her on Twitter and Instagram @TinaHornsAss and visit TinaHorn.net

Edgar Gomez (all pronouns) is a Florida-born writer with roots in Nicaragua and Puerto Rico. A graduate of University of California, Riverside’s MFA program, their words have appeared in Poets & Writers, Narratively, Catapult, Lithub, The Rumpus, and elsewhere online and in print. Their memoir, High-Risk Homosexual, was called a “breath of fresh air” by The New York Times, named a Best Book of 2022 by Publisher’s Weekly, Buzzfeed, and Electric Literature, and received a 2023 Stonewall Honor Award. Their second book, a memoir about money, Florida, and surviving under capitalism titled Alligator Tears, will be out in 2025 from Crown. They live in New York and Puerto Rico. Find them across social media @OtroEdgarGomez. 

Lynn Comella, Ph.D. is a professor of gender and sexuality studies in the department of interdisciplinary, gender, and ethnic studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. An expert on sexual economies and the adult entertainment industry, her research has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, Jezebel, BUST, and more. She is the author of Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure (Duke University Press, 2017) and co-editor of New Views on Pornography: Sexuality, Politics, and the Law (Praeger, 2015). Her work has also appeared in the International Journal of Communication, Porn Studies, Feminist Media Studies, The Feminist Porn Book, Commodity Activism, Contexts, Sex for Sale, and New Sociologies of Sex Work, among other venues. 

She is co-chair of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Adult Film History Scholarly Interest Group and a regular contributor to Forbes, where she covers the business of sex. She received the 2015 Nevada Regents’ Rising Researcher Award in recognition of early-career accomplishments and is a frequent media commentator. Comella received a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; an M.A. in gender studies and feminist theory from the New School for Social Research; and a B.A. in psychology, with minors in anthropology and women’s studies, from Penn State University. She lives in Downtown Las Vegas with her husband and their three mischievous cats.

Parking/getting there: Parking on UNLV’s campus is free and open to all after 7 p.m. Turn onto East Harmon Avenue and take it as far as you can into campus; The Barrick Museum of Art is just past the Lied Library, on the right-hand side of Parking Lot I. 

Questions? Please email blackmountaininstitute@unlv.edu or call (702) 895-5542.