THE KENSINGTON LADIES'
EROTICA SOCIETY

Rose Solomon
Finding the Kensington Ladies fed Rose’s propensity to engage in erotic daydreaming as an escape from her responsibilities as a teacher, mother of two, school board member, editor, freelance writer and cartoonist. For Rose, meeting her husband was not only an erotic dream come true, it gave birth to her pseudonym. The name burst forth during an intimate moment when they were new to each other. She had whispered that his ears smelled like roast almonds. "Rose Solomon?" he’d cried like a man accused. "Who’s she?" she asked, equally alarmed. For their 39 years together Rose Solomon has remained "the other woman" in their life.

Sabina Sedgewick, Founder
A storyteller since childhood, Sabina has never drawn a sharp line between fact and fiction. Imported from Germany by her husband when she was 23, she founded the Kensington Ladies Erotica Society in her 40th year. She had just finished writing The Great American Housewife and, with an academic library career and two teenage children, she hankered for irresponsibility. Now in her late sixties she has been living a double life ever since with Sabina as her alter ego. Sabina also provides erotic relief in her 47-year-long marriage and cause for concern to the parents of her five grandchildren. She is currently completing an autobiographical novel, entitled Made in Germany.

Bernadette Vaughan
Bernadette was born in Britain, the product of an uneasy alliance between the Welsh and the French. Educated in France, Senegal (then French West Africa) and England, she could speak three languages by the age of four but unfortunately never learned the alphabet in any of them. Despite this drawback she has been writing seriously since the age of nine. For many years a professional actor, she performed in, and wrote for, theater, television and radio in London and the San Francisco Bay Area and now works as a freelance writer. She considers herself a semi-Americanized Franco-Brit who struggles daily to integrate three powerful, seductive, and often warring cultures.

Nell Port
When The Kensington Ladies started writing erotica, Nell Port was in her thirties, had completed her doctorate in psychology and was teaching women's sexual health seminars. She felt very naughty to have "Erotica" on her calendar amidst doctor and dentist appointments and her children's teacher conferences. Now in her sixties, her children are grown and having children of their own. She's happy that they'll always know their masked Granny as "Naughty Nell."

Elvira Pearson
Elvira joined the Kensington Ladies at the invitation of Sabina, a subscriber to her newsletter for midlife women (and men) called Midlifery. It was the late seventies, and women everywhere were finding their voices—but not yet their erotic voices. Writing erotica from a woman's point of view turned out to be not as easy as falling out of bed, she discovered. Intimidated by the Ladies and shy about presenting her first erotic story to a group of strangers, she thrust the pages into Sabina's hands the night of its meeting, pleading a headache. Following hundreds of delectable meals, long storytelling nights, sidesplitting girl talk and three published books, she now finds it hard to believe they were once that young and once that brave. Elvira has six grandchildren.