Elva Maxine Beach’s first erotic kiss occurred at her neighborhood swimming pool when she was barely five years old. This innocent kiss transformed into an insatiable taste for boys and men, a craving she began chronicling in journals at the age of ten. She has been writing about her sexcapades ever since, and her first book of short stories and poems, Neurotica, is a result of this obsessive-compulsive need to fictionalize her most intimate experiences.

To fund her habit of seductive storytelling, Beach has worked as a car hop, waitress, usher, maid, janitor, dishwasher, secretary, scriptwriter, copywriter, technical writer, critic, videographer, producer, editor, tutor, proctor, teacher and professor.

Beach pursued her Mistress of Fine Arts, Creative Writing at Louisiana
State University where her mentor and party buddy, Andrei Codrescu told her to “Stop working so hard and write some erotica.”

“My work isn’t necessarily erotica,” Beach says.  “It’s raw, yes, and there’s lots of fucking and sucking, but my work delves into the psyche.  It’s psyche-sexual drama.”

Originally from bebop groovy Kansas City, Beach has lived and loved in cool jazz town St. Louis, and Cajun crazy Baton Rouge, Music Capital of the World, Austin, Texas and now she once again resides in St. Louis where she teaches writing, professes pleasure, and encourages mindful hedonism.

Photo by Christian N. Sauer, St. Louis Missouri