Holly Hughes
author of Clit Notes: A Sapphic Sampler, Hughes is one of the most popular and controversial out-there-in-your-face writer/performers around. An "escape artist" who escaped her conservative upbringing in a part of the country "where silence was the first language," she has become an Obie award-winning performance artist and playwright, as well as a central figure in America's culture wars. In the late `80s and early `90s, Holly Hughes was the undisputed lesbian "bad girl" of publicly funded art. Her open, often raw depiction of sexuality, especially in her work at New York's feminist WOW cafe, rattled both ends of the political spectrum. By the end of the `80s, Hughes had moved toward a showdown with the Christian Right's perennial senatorial patriarch, Jesse Helms. Her body of work includes Dress Suits for Hire (a collaboration with Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver), No Trace of the Blonde, The Well of Horniness, Clit Notes, and Cat O'Nine Tales.

[extracted from 2001 brochure]

24th Annual Literary Festival