About (Bio / Awards / Media / etc)

Also archived: Awards | Interviews | Media Appearances
And my personal Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN1K-PWNWTNHk4m6ffZoMvw

Various official “bios” for publication purposes:
Last updated: August 17, 2021

Romance & Award-Winning

Cecilia Tan is “simply one of the most important writers, editors, and innovators in contemporary American erotic literature,” according to Susie Bright. Her BDSM romance novel Slow Surrender (Hachette/Forever, 2013) won both the 2013 RT Reviewers Choice Award in Erotic Romance and the Maggie Award for Excellence, and Tan herself was awarded the RT Career Achievement Award in Erotic Fiction and the RT Pioneer Award in Genre Fiction for Erotica at the 2015 RT Booklovers Convention in Dallas.

Tan is the author of many books, including the ground-breaking erotic short story collections Black Feathers (HarperCollins), White Flames (Running Press), and Edge Plays (Circlet Press), and the erotic romances Slow Surrender, Slow Seduction, and Slow Satisfaction (Hachette/Forever), The Prince’s Boy (Circlet Press), The Hot Streak (Riverdale Avenue Books), and the Magic University series (Riverdale Avenue Books). Her short stories have appeared in Ms. Magazine, Nerve, Best American Erotica, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and tons of other places. She was inducted into the Saints & Sinners Hall of Fame for GLBT writers in 2010, was a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Leather Association in 2004, and won the inaugural Rose & Bay Awards for Best Fiction in 2010 for her crowdfunded web fiction serial Daron’s Guitar Chronicles.

Her urban fantasy series, The Vanished Chronicles, is due out soon from Tor Books. She lives in the Boston area with her lifelong partner corwin and three cats. Find out more at www.ceciliatan.com.

Short and generic:

Cecilia Tan writes about her many passions, from erotic fantasy to baseball, from her home in the Boston area. She is the author of many books, including the award-winning books Slow Surrender, Daron’s Guitar Chronicles, and The Prince’s Boy. She has edited over 50 anthologies of erotica for Red Silk Editions, Thunder’s Mouth Press, Blue Moon Books, Masquerade Books, Ravenous Romance, and for the publishing house she founded, Circlet Press. Her short fiction has appeared in Ms. Magazine, Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine, Best American Erotica, and many other places. She has served as publications director for SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) since 2011. Follow her blog at https://www.ceciliatan.com.

Short “erotica and sex” version:

Cecilia Tan is a writer, editor, and sexuality activist. She is the author of Slow Surrender, The Prince’s Boy, Mind Games, The Hot Streak, White Flames, Edge Plays, Black Feathers, The Velderet, and Telepaths Don’t Need Safewords, as well as the Magic University series of paranormal erotic romances. She has the distinction of being perhaps the only writer to have erotic fiction published in both Penthouse and Ms. magazines, as well as in scores of other magazines and anthologies including Asimov’s, Best American Erotica, and Nerve. She is the founder and editor of Circlet Press, publishers of erotic science fiction and fantasy, the founder and creator of the Fetish Fair Fleamarket (TM), and was inducted into the Saints & Sinners Hall of Fame for GLBT writers in 2010.

Long “erotica and sex” version:

“Cecilia Tan transcends time, space, gravity, and cultural norms in her line of work: erotic science fiction,” according to San Francisco Weekly. Susie Bright calls her “simply one of the most important writers, editors, and innovators in contemporary American erotic literature.” Tan always considered herself a writer, but her career took off in 1992 when she self-published a chapbook of three BDSM-themed science fiction stories entitled Telepaths Don’t Need Safewords–and thus Circlet Press was born. Since that time Circlet Press has published over 80 books of erotic fantasy & science fiction edited by her (with many more on the way) and in her own writing career she has written everything from short stories to paranormal romance novels. Her books include the BDSM-themed “Struck by Lightning” romance series, the first of which, Slow Surrender, was published by Hachette in 2013 and won the RT Reviewers Choice Award in Erotic Romance, as well as Black Feathers (HarperCollins, 1998), The Velderet (Circlet, 2001), White Flames (Running Press, 2008), Mind Games (Ravenous Romance, 2009; Red Silk Editions, 2010), The Siren and The Sword (Ravenous Romance, 2009; Red Silk Editions, 2010), Royal Treatment (Torquere Press, 2009) and others. Tan has also edited numerous erotica anthologies for other publishers, including the Lambda Literary Award nominated Women of the Bite (Alyson Publications, 2010), Sex In The System (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006), The MILF Anthology (Blue Moon Books, 2005), Cowboy Lover (Carroll & Graf, 2007), Bites of Passion (Ravenous Romance/Red Silk Editions), SM Visions (Masquerade Books), and many others. Her stories, essays, and articles in have appeared in dozens of magazines and anthologies including Best America Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Women’s Erotica, Playboy Online, The Mammoth Book of New Erotica, On A Bed of Rice, Dark Angels, Penthouse, Ms. magazine, Asimov’s, Nerve, Gothic.net, Fenway Fiction, Periphery, and many more. Her online serial novel, Daron’s Guitar Chronicles, won the Rose & Bay Awards for crowdfunded fiction in 2010, and Like a Thorn, an anthology of BDSM-themed fairy tales she co-edited with Sarah Desautels won the NLA: International writing award for BDSM-positive fiction from 2009. She is the recipient of the NLA:I Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2010 was inducted into the Saints and Sinners Hall of Fame for GLBT writers and editors.

Baseball writer version:

Cecilia Tan has been writing about baseball since she recorded Dave Righetti’s no-hitter in her high school diary in 1983. She is the author of The 50 Greatest Yankee Games (Wiley, 2004) and edited the Yankees Annual from 2007 to 2013. In 2011 she became publications director for SABR, where she edits the Baseball Research Journal and directs the SABR digital books program. In 2012 and 2013 she also co-edited the Baseball Prospectus annual with King Kaufman. Her own baseball writings have appeared in Yankees Magazine, Gotham Baseball, Slow Trains, Baseball Ink, Baseball Savvy, Yankees Xtreme, Fenway Fiction, and elsewhere. In 2004 she won the USA Today Sports Weekly award for best poster presentation at the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) convention. A member of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, she also writes and produces one of the Internet’s oldest baseball journals, WhyILikeBaseball.com, which she founded in 1999, before “blogs” formally existed.

---

And now, the informal stuff. If you really want biographical miscellany, check out my original online journal, which goes back to 1996, long before there were such things as “blogs,” and which is now carried on at here at this blog.

So, who am I? I’m a writer, best known for my erotic stories but I also write science fiction, mainstream fiction, baseball nonfiction, and essays. (A complete list of my publications is available if you want the gory details on what I’ve done and what I have coming up…)

There are also the books I have edited through the company I founded, Circlet Press erotic science fiction and fantasy. I travel extensively doing readings, giving workshops, autographings, you name it.

When I am home, I practice TaeKwon-Do at the Jae Hun Kim Tae Kwon Do Institute in Cambridge, MA. I also work there a few nights a week.

In 1995 I bought a house with my long-term partner corwin, where we live with our rescued cats, Oolong & Earl Grey.

I play the guitar, the flute, mandolin, and a bunch of other things. For 18 years I worked at King Richard’s Faire in Carver, MA in the Fall, where I played the flute and work in the Wind & Wood booth selling wooden flutes for Billy Miller. Before going into book publishing, I had previously held jobs in a bird-feeder factory, as a radio disk jockey, and as a cook’s assistant. I was a professional ski instructor and I taught mime and Spanish to elementary school kids. I was once a Girl Scout, too.