This is FRESH air.
I'm Tonya Moseley, and my guest today is author Brittany Newell, who loves to write about the secret worlds of others,
the things people do, she says, that make their lives more bearable.
Her newest novel, softcore, takes the reader into San Francisco's underworld of dive bars,
strip clubs and BDSM dungeons where Tech Bros.
Executives and outcasts live out their fantasies.
Ruth, the protagonist, is a stripper who unravels when her ex boyfriend, a ketamine dealer, disappears.
Ruth, known by her stripper name, Baby Blue,
starts working
as a professional dominatrix where she tries to fulfill the deepest desires of her clients who mostly want to talk
to her about how lonely they are
and the grief they carry.
Brittany Newell draws from personal experience.
In addition to being a writer, she is also a professional dominatrix.
A graduate of Stanford University, she studied comparative literature and gender studies and wrote her debut novel,
Oola, in 2017 when she was 21 years old.
It's been described as the millennial Lolita.
Newell has written for the New York Times, Joyland and Playgirl.
She and her wife run a monthly drag and dance party called Angels at Aunt Charlie's Lounge,
which is one of San Francisco's oldest queer bars.