Explaining the Explicit

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EXPLAINING THE EXPLICIT edited by Jill Waters

A series of thoughtful and challenging personal reflections from five very different writers on how best to write about sex . In little more than a generation, Western culture has arguably progressed from a largely repressed attitude to portraying the pleasures of the flesh to an altogether more permissive approach. How have writers - and readers - adjusted to these changes and what are authors trying to say when they write about sex ? These essays offer a chance to step back and reflect on some of the subtler aspects of writing about sexuality, arguments that can otherwise get lost in a sea of pneumatic imagery. Somewhere between the conventions of shock, titillation and comedy lies a range of other ideas waiting to be explored.

Julian Barnes – is an internationally acclaimed novelist. He won the Man Booker prize in 2011 for his last novel The Sense of an Ending.

David Bellos is a translator and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton. His book on translation and meaning Is That a Fish in Your Ear? was published in 2011.

Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at University of East Anglia. Her book Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby, is due out in April 2013.

Vicki Feaver is an award-winning poet and lecturer. Her last collection The Book of Blood was shortlisted for the Forward Prize in 2006.

Rachel Johnson is a journalist and novelist who won the Bad Sex Award in 2008, the year that the same judges awarded John Updike a ‘lifetime achievement’ award. Her latest novel Winter Games was published in 2012.

Jill Waters – is an independent radio producer with a background in publishing. She commissioned these essays after a conversation with Julian Barnes. They were broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in March 2013 and are published here in full for the first time.