Jean Roberta once promised her parents not to use their unusual family name for her queer and erotic writing, and thus was born her thin-disguise pen name. She teaches English and Creative Writing in a university on the Canadian prairies, where the vastness of land and sky encourage daydreaming.
Jean immigrated to Canada from the United States as a teenager with her family. In her last year of high school, she won a major award in a national student writing contest. In 1988, a one-woman publisher in Montreal published a book of Jean’s lesbian stories,
Secrets of the Invisible World. When the publisher went out of business, the book went out of print.
In the same year, Jean attended the Third International Feminist Book Fair in Montreal, where she read a call-for-submissions for erotic lesbian stories. She wrote three, sent them off, and got a letter saying that all three were accepted. Then the publisher went out of business.
In 1998, Jean and her partner acquired their first computer. Jean looked for writers’ groups and found the
Erotic Readers & Writers Association, which was then two years old! She began writing erotica in every flavor she could think of (f/f, m/f, m/m, f/f/m, etc) and in various genres (realistic contemporary, fantasy, historical). Her stories have appeared in anthology series such as
Best Lesbian Erotica (2000, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, Volume 1 in new series, 2016),
Best Lesbian Romance (2014), and
Best Women's Erotica (2000, 2003, 2005, 2006) from Cleis Press, as well as many others.
Her single-author books include
Obsession (Renaissance, Sizzler Editions), an erotic story collection,
The Princess and the Outlaw: Tales of the Torrid Past (Lethe Press), and
The Flight of the Black Swan: A Bawdy Novella (Lethe, also in audio).
Fantasy stories by Jean include “Lunacy” in
Journey to the Center of Desire (erotic stories based on the work of Jules Verne) from Circlet Press 2017, “Green Spectacles and Rosy Cheeks” (steampunk erotica) in
Valves & Vixens 3 (House of Erotica, UK, 2016), and “Under the Sign of the Dragon” (story about the conception of King Arthur) in
Nights of the Round Table: Arthurian Erotica (Circlet 2015). This story is now available from eXcessica (
http://excessica.com). Her horror story, “Roots,” first published in
Monsters from Torquere Press, is now in the Treasure Gallery of the
Erotic Readers and Writers Association. With Lethe Press publisher Steve Berman, she coedited
Heiresses of Russ 2015 (Lethe), an annual anthology of the year’s best lesbian speculative fiction.
Her realistic erotic novel,
Prairie Gothic: A Tale of the Old Millennium, was published by Lethe in September 2021.
Jean has written many reviews and blog posts. Her former columns include “Sex Is All Metaphors” (based on a line in a poem by Dylan Thomas) for the
Erotic Readers and Writers Association, July 2008-November 2010. The 25 column pieces can still be found in the
on-site archives and in an e-book from Coming Together,
www.eroticanthology.com.
Jean married her long-term partner, Mirtha Rivera, on October 30, 2010.
Links:
www.JeanRoberta.com
http://eroticaforall.co.uk/category/author-profiles
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