AWP 2023: The Narrative of Desire: The Importance of Writing Horny Women

A panel discussion with Carmen Maria Machado, Alyssa Songsiridej, and Lillian Fishman.

Sexual desire is a perfect narrative accelerant. It propels plot, informs character, thwarts plans. But pure sexual desire is often denied female characters, who are allowed to be desirous-but-doomed or desirous-but-it’s-self-actualization but rarely messily, humanly horny. In this panel, four writers discuss the strategies, challenges, and value of writing horniness in fiction, the impoverished history of women’s desire in fiction, and importance of a robust future of horny women characters.