• Age: 18
• Grade: 12

The Nerves subverts the literary approach to sexuality by treating the erotic not as a site of anxiety but of reverie. Set in an imaginary world where our sense memories tell us who we are, Lee Suksi's literary debut is psychedelic, attentive, cinematic and hot. Writing toward sensitivity and ecstasy, exploring touch as healing abandon, The Nerves is charged with desire, devotion, and creative fantasy. Through a series of joyful encounters, Suksi reminds us that pleasure can be abundant, nuanced and that it can heal. Engaging in a queer erotics of language, Suksi’s debut is a bundle of wet atmospheres, speaking to faith in touch.

Lee Suksi's profile page

• Winner, Lambda Literary Awards - LGBTQ Erotica

Lee Suksi has lived in Toronto for a decade. Their writing has mostly appeared as texts accompanying exhibitions or read at galleries, including at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Cooper Cole, Georgia Scherman Projects, Susan Hobbs, Towards, The Table, and Calaboose. They’ve presented at Doored, Images Festival and Blackwood Gallery.

"Freaky, sweet, and incredibly sexy, the intimacy of this book feels like sharing a perfume with your new lover, syncing periods, and then remembering with horror that love is a state of anxiety. These poems stir up trouble in a state of ecstasy that 'sugar, drugs, and waterfalls' come close to conjuring. The Nerves is a pillow to hold as you fall asleep dreaming of past or future lovers, it's that gentle dizzy feeling: crush, crush, crush, crush."
- RACHEL RABBIT WHITE, author of Porn Carnival

“A cyclical and microscopic search for intimacy that leads back to one's warm touch."
- SOOK YIN LEE, author of Shortbus

"In The Nerves, there are portraits, and self-portraits, and big hearts moving through rooms. There are bodies tumbling, squeezing, yelling, holding; there is seduction and vulnerability and, most of all, trust. Suksi's sentences crackle with the pleasure of their own description, each line recreating itself more tenderly and erotically than the one before."
- JACQUELYN ZONG-LI ROSS, author of Drawings on Yellow Paper