Brothel - Stephanie M. Wytovich

Recipient of the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection

Wytovich plays madam in a collection of erotic horror that challenges the philosophical connection between death and orgasm. There's a striptease that happens in Brothel that is neither fact nor fiction, fantasy nor memory. It is a dance of eroticism, of death and decay. The human body becomes a service station for pain, for pleasure, for the lonely, the confused. Sexuality is hung on the door, and the act of love is far from anything that's decent. Her women spread their legs to violence then smoke a cigarettes and get on all fours. They use their bodies as weapons and learn to find themselves in the climax of the boundaries they cross in order to define their humanity...or lack thereof.

Wytovich shows us that the definition of the feminine is not associated with the word victim. Her characters resurrect themselves over and over again, fighting stereotypes, killing expectations. She shows us that sex isn't about love; it's about control. And when the control is disproportionate to the fantasy, she shows us the true meaning of femme fatale.