Express Night Out’s Roxana Hadadi reviews and interviews David Henry Sterry.  Read the full article here!

There are pieces both from anonymous writers – with titles like “Boys Shouldn’t Kiss Their Fathers on the Lips” and “Co-Co County Boy” – and established personalities, like porn star and educator Nina Hartley, who proclaims in her entry, “Playing in the Sandbox”, that she “became a sex worker for narcissism, altruism, for voyeurism, for exhibitionism, and as a long-term field study.”  If “Boogie Nights” made you cover your eyes, then you should probably pass the book to a stronger-stomached friend.

EXPRESS: How did you get the idea for “Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys,” and how did the book come together?

STERRY: After my first book “Chicken” came out in 2002, I was recruited by both sides of the whore wars: The abolitionists, and the decriminalizationist.  And to both sides, I said yes – [that's a] good way to get into the sex business in the first place, just say yes.

And I quickly realized there was a sharp divide in the world of prostitution/sex work.  And, as with everything else in America, the bottom-line in ho-ing is money… there are people at the very bottom of the food chain who are basically sex slaves, being exploited in the worst ways imaginable by the most vile evil predators.  And there are women, men, and transsexuals who are over the age of 18, in full command of all their faculties, and are choosing to use their body and their brain to make money in the sex business.

And the crazy thing is, these two sides have a hard time acknowledging the truth of the other.  I had no political axe to grind: If you worked in the sex business, and you had a story to tell, and you had the skill to tell it, you were welcome in our book.  And because of my strange position in the world, [I] know lots of hos, and I put out to the word to all the hos I know, and they spread the word.  The writing poured in from everywhere.

As a result, I have writing by 15-year-old girls who were raped, beaten, burned, starved, degraded and exploited by the worst sum of the earth, and I have women who used sex work to pay for their master of fine arts degree at Berkley – and everything in-between.

Read the full interview on Express Night Out!