User talk:Laura Roberts

Laura Roberts
Laura Roberts (born October 14, 1978) is a Montreal author who writes the weekly Hour column "V for Vixen," and edits the smut magazine Black Heart. Roberts' writing has been described as "raw and raunchy, a delight to all the senses" (Broken Pencil). She has referred to herself as a Smut Mistress, and has occasionally been pegged as a Daughter of the Devil, due to the graphic sexual themes of her work.

Biography
Born in the U.S., Roberts took a Philosophy degree at Fordham University in The Bronx in 2001. She was a full- or part-time employee at a variety of odd jobs before moving to Montreal to attend Concordia University in 2002, and graduated from the Joint Honours Degree in Creative Writing and English Literature. Her first zine was published while she was still a student in the Creative Writing program. Black Heart, a zine about love, lust, sex and relationships gone bad, was well received by the critics and sold respectably (200 copies of the first issue). She released the second issue in October 2005, and has begun updating the website regularly with weekly installments of fictional or non-fictional pieces.

Roberts began writing the weekly column V for Vixen for one of Montreal's weekly alternative papers, Hour, in October of 2007, replacing former columnist Josey Vogels. Since then, she has also branched out into other sex-related ventures, including teaching (she is currently teaching a CSU 101 course on the Kama Sutra at Concordia) and public speaking, launching the Hardcore Reading Series at the Concordia Community Solidarity Co-op Bookstore in February 2008).

Trivia

 * Roberts has almost been killed off the coast of Hawaii, fired from two jobs in Canada and propositioned by a foot fetishist in Times Square. She was once stalked by a man imprisoned for attempted rape and armed robbery. She enjoys the musical stylings of both Mozart and Madonna and has run on a treadmill alongside Johnny Depp at the Westmount YMCA. There is only one lie contained in the preceeding paragraph.


 * Black Heart - the title of the zine is taken from a David Usher song, "Black Black Heart." When Usher's management refused to grant Roberts permission to use the title in homage, she simply removed one of the "black"s.


 * There are frequent allusions throughout Roberts' work, including references to films, music, modern fiction, Greek mythology, etc. Many of her stories are homages, such as "Kat Likes Pretty Boys," a reference to 10 Things I Hate About You, which is in itself an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.