Simon Sheppard is a writer of gay erotica and a sex-advice columnist from San Francisco. He is the author of many highly acclaimed works of gay erotica/pornography, including the books Kinkorama, In Deep, and Sex Parties 101. He is also the editor of Homosex: 60 Years of Gay Erotica, winner of the 2007 Lambda Literary Award for LGBT erotica; the anthology Leathermen; and is the coeditor of the anthologies Rough Stuff and Roughed Up. Sheppard's work is wide-ranging, often combining history, philosophy, or culture — high and low — with hardcore sex. His first book, Hotter Than Hell and Other Stories, won the Erotic Authors Association Award for Best Collection of the Year, and the title story of In Deep was shortlisted for the Rauxa Prize for Erotic Fiction. His work has appeared in over 250 anthologies and he writes the columns "Sex Talk" and the online serial "The Dirty Boys Club." Sheppard is openly gay, active in the queer artistic, political and AIDS-activist communities, and has publicly opposed the Iraq war. He lives in San Francisco, where San Francisco dubbed him "our erotica king."