Cleis Press is an independent publisher of books in the areas of sexuality, erotica, feminism, gay and lesbian studies, gender studies, fiction, and human rights. The press was founded in 1980 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, later moved to San Francisco, and is now based out of Berkeley, CA. It was founded by Frédérique Delacoste, Felice Newman and Mary Winfrey Trautmann who collectively financed wrote and published the press's first book Fight Back: Feminist Resistance to Male Violence in 1981. In 1987, they published Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry by Delacoste with Priscilla Alexander.

Over the years, Cleis Press has published nonfiction books by Susie Bright, Annie Sprinkle, Edmund White, Essex Hemphill, Gore Vidal, Christine Jorgensen, Matthue Roth, Patrick Califia, Violet Blue (author), and Tristan Taormino, among others. Fiction includes works by Achy Obejas, Stephen Elliott, Erastes (author), reissues of classic lesbian pulp fiction (including Ann Bannon's historic Beebo Brinker series), the Nancy Clue series by Mabel Maney, Virginia Woolf’s first completed novel, Melymbrosia, and an English-language novel set in North Korea, Jia by Hyejin Kim. Other Cleis Press authors include Lori Bryant-Woolridge, Cole Riley, Neil Plakcy, Radclyffe, James Lear, and Richard Labonté.

Rachel Kramer Bussel (born 1975) is an author, columnist, and editor, specializing in erotica. She previously studied at the New York University School of Law and earned her bachelor's degree in Political Science and Women's Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

Bussel is currently Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations, Contributing Editor to Penthouse, and a blogger for The Huffington Post[1]

She has authored many erotic short stories and has collected her own works, as well as others', in a number of published collections, including specialized volumes on BDSM (two volumes of Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z and the He's On Top & She's On Top collections) and Lesbian erotica (Glamour Girls & First-Timers) .

She has also co-edited a number of collections with other editors and writers, including Eliza Castle, Alison Tyler, Stacy Bias, Wendy Caster, Julie May, and Christopher Pierce.

In addition, she is a rotating interviewer for the Gothamist, a columnist for SexIs Magazine [2] and the curator for a monthly erotic reading series, In the Flesh, in New York City.

Rachel Kramer (born in Rotterdam on August 9, 1980) is a Dutch singer and the runner-up of the second season of the X Factor] in the Netherlands. Her first single is a cover of Rascal Flatts's What Hurts The Most.

New single from 2011 - The Time is now

Until 2003, Kramer was a member of the Dutch band K-otic.

Personal website of Rachel Kramer www.rachel-kramer.com