WINNER Penny Boot

Outsiders is the self-help group which is financed by the Erotic Awards.

Outsiders has been going for over twenty years and has an ever-changing membership of around 500, mostly in Britain. Most members have physical or social disabilities, and use the Club to gain more confidence so they can express their sexuality and find partners. Members offer each other support by letter, phone and e-mail, through its magazine Inside, and at events. Outsiders is run from an office in Holland Park and has never received a government grant. Donations are welcome.

Each year the Erotic Awards present a prize to one member of Outsiders, selected for personal progress and services to the Club. This year, Penny became secretary of the ManCom, appeared on several TV documentaries and become engaged to another member, Gabriel. She wrote this about herself:

I was born in the sixties and just about remember when humans reached the moon. At the age of two, my life was pulled down an unexpected path, when the diagnoses of a medical condition led me to be defined as a disabled person. Because I see disability as primarily socially constructed, I am comfortable to value who I am on account of my specific life experience. This unusual - often challenging - yet ultimately affirming journey is at the core of my writing. I have been self-employed as a freelance writer for two years.

Previously to this I was employed by a voluntary sector organisation, Arthritis Care, as a Publications Officer/Staff Writer/Editor for two and a half years. Over the last two years I have also become involved with disability-positive photographic modelling, art photography modelling and Life modelling. I am about to begin a project with a Japanese Bondage Performance Artist as a model. Last December, the TV production company RDF featured me as part of an hour long film about expansive sexuality. I am profiled for twenty minutes as the film traces my journey as a creative individual, sexual being and self-defining thinker. It focuses on my work as a writer and model - and disabled person. This film was screened on Channel Four.

My latest activities include winning an Erotic Award at the notorious Sex Maniacs Ball, and modelling at the Outsiders 20th Anniversary celebration, Sensuality Day, in Kew Gardens. I enjoy my involvement with Outsiders, the only self-help group to give support and opportunities for isolated people, some disabled, to have sexual relationships.

I am active in the arenas of disability arts, radical politics, paganism and sexual freedom - all of which are reflected in my fiction, which is non-genre literary slipstream at its heart. I obviously write about these varied experiences and adventures and incorporate them into my fiction. I am currently working on new short fiction and a novel.

Examples from recent writing history:

• Prue Shows Her Knickers (fiction) in anthology Mustn't Grumble published by The Women's Press.
• Saying Goodbye (fiction) published by Quality Women's Fiction
• Our Relationships, Our Sexuality writer and researcher; published by voluntary-sector organisation.
• Getting A Grip features excerpts from the above, published by Hodder Headline.
• Untold Desires: the sexual politics of disability Published by Cassell. Explicit essay on sexual celebration and lovemaking.
• Feminist Arts World, DAIL, Boadicea, DAM, DN, Link, AN, Ability, Pagan Dawn,
• Inside: articles, reviews, poetry, regular columnist and short story contributor.
• I have had fiction and non-fiction work published in the underground/small press, magazines/fanzines and voluntary groups. I have been writing for a number of years with material published in both magazines and book anthologies.

• Penny Boot, c/o Outsiders PO Box 28724, London E18 1XW
• p.boot@virgin.net

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