Dena Hankins

Dena Hankins (born December 1, 1975) is an American novelist and short story author, best known for queer and transgender erotic romance. Her short stories have been published in several erotica anthologies, including Best Women's Erotica of the Year, Volume 8 edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel. Her non-fiction articles about sailing, electric motors for sailboats, and DIY boat repair have been published by the trusted British magazine Practical Boat Owner and she edited several editions of the boater's cruising guides published by The Waterway Guide.

Hankins' fiction is part of a growing trend to feature queer romance that is outside of the "issues" books that were once more common. Publishers Weekly called her novel Blue Water Dreams, featuring a love story between a queer cisgender woman and a transgender man, an "exciting debut", and Lambda Literary Review included Blue Water Dreams among "new and noteworthy" LGBT books. Literary blog Out in Print: Queer Book Reviews chose Blue Water Dreams for inclusion in its "Best of 2014" top ten list. The American Library Association found her book to be "well within the expectations of the romance genre, albeit with an aypical male lead."

Hankins' second novel, Heart of the Lilikoi, features an erotic romance between a cisgender lesbian construction contractor and a masculine genderqueer solar energy scientist in the midst of sabotage, murder, and the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Publishers Weekly called Heart of the Lilikoi an "intriguing contemporary", "strong and satisfying" with "intensely vivid erotic encounters".

Lysistrata Cove, published in September 2016, is a romance within a tale of high seas adventure while examining questions of artistic autonomy within the U.S. music industry. Liz Baudler of Windy City Times noted that "author Dena Hankins has mastered the art of casual inclusion" and said, "If Neal Stephenson, author of such sci-fi classics as Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, wrote BDSM erotica, tonally it would feel a lot like Lysistrata Cove." It includes a BDSM relationship between a trans masculine sea captain and a polyamorous queer superstar chanteuse.

Personal life
Hankins studied English literature at the University of Washington Seattle, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1998. Before launching her writing career Hankins worked for eight years as a sex educator with Babeland, a Seattle-based feminist sex toy store. In 2001 she was featured on HBO's Real Sex #26 as a demo model for a Babeland cunnilingus workshop.

In 1999 she and her partner, photographer James Lane, bought a sailboat and began living aboard full-time. The couple sailed from Seattle to San Francisco in 2000-2001, then across the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii in 2006. After living in Kerala, India, they returned to the United States to purchase a new sailing vessel and traveled the East Coast of the United States from Virginia to Maine. After replacing their diesel engine with an electric motor, they sailed to Bermuda, the Azores, Madeira, and the Canary Islands. Hankins chronicles her "Around the World in 80 Years" traveling adventures as well as pieces from her growing body of literary work at her blog, Sovereign Nations.