I feel lucky to live my life as a writer and artist. Every day I get to learn new things, and I love sharing those thoughts with all of you.
My writing has been featured in Jersey Devil Press and Monkey Bicycle, including a poem that was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2004. I graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a Master’s of Liberal Arts in 2019.
My memoir No End Of The Bed spans my search for truth through differing perceptions of sex, with some surprising parallels made between the fundamentalist church and the sex-positive movement.
Lauren J. Barnhart 
I’m glad that you liked my post on “Swords, Specters, & Stuff,” even with my snarky literary agent comment. 🙂 You’re welcome back anytime.
Lauren, hi, Workstudio from Open Salon, saw your message there, you can go and join our salon, our.salon.ning.com, there´s about 400+ members there now, many from OS, you´ll see many familiar faces, Alysa´s there (she kindly takes care of the fiction club there as well) until they fix the OS site. Cheers, WS
Lauren – if you feel the need to reconnect with the OS community, most of us have moved to Our Salon. http://oursalon.net/ or http://oursalon.ning.com/
Thanks for reaching out, but I’m enjoying having one central location here at wordpress.
Congrats on being freshly pressed and the memoir sounds intriguing! Do let us know when it’s published and how to get hold of it. Will you give us a taster here on your blog?
You should indulge yourself and take this moment to revel (in whatever form revelry suggests to you!) as you await the release of your book. That you’ve never given up after such a long and tortuous journey to write this memoir is a testament to the fortitude of you both as an artist and a person. Life is, indeed, a perfect journey…you just can’t see it as such except in looking back. In the moment it all seems so, well, random. Your journey continues, and I wish you so much success.
Congratulations on being pressed. Be warned, however, (and I know this from being FreshlyPressed once myself) After the high, comes the low. It is the cycle of creative life. Hang in there and enjoy this hard earned moment.
I am probably as far politically and spiritually opposite as one could be from you…but that doesn’t change the fact that you are an exceptional writer.
I just came upon your blog and I immediately am drawn in by your truth, vulnerability and willingness to be messy. I will be one of the readers of your memoir.
Well hello there Lauren! My reader pane suggested I should stop by , and well, I can’t express how happy I am I did! Like perhaps many of your followers I was very moved and inspired by some of your posts. I am looking forward to digging deeper into this blog and reading your memoir! Congrats on following your he[art] ! 🙂
Hey, great blog, you have!! I love reading. I saw your comments on Masondan’s blog. He followed mine and I checked his out. I disagree with most of his views but I like reading different perspectives. I’m also an Atheist. I agree with your comments and views. Your memoir seems very interesting and I plan on reading it! :-D. Congratulations on your success in writing!
@inspirationalgem – The debate on masondan’s blog was very amusing, and I’m glad more people disagreed with him after my initial comments. Logic based on faith is no logic at all. Thanks so much for your support, and I hope you enjoy the memoir! Right now, I’m working on a book that explores the psychological impact of religion on people’s lives. It’s a huge challenge, but I feel like compiling all of this research could help a lot of people, and right now, it’s helping me understand all that I went through, and what I see certain family members still going through. Very exciting stuff!
Hi Lauren, just wanted to let you know that I did purchase “No End Of The Bed” and I really enjoyed it and have since passed it on. When I get a chance to I will post a review in a few different places. Loved the writing, it was very raw and very real. That was quite the journey and I have to say I wish I could have heard more about how you went about disentangling yourself. Oh the conversations I would love to have with you about some of these events and the parallels in mine right now. It is funny how some books we pick up mirror our lives. Thanks for the great read!!!!
Hi Shannon,
I’m so glad you enjoyed it, and that you found parallels in your own life. When readers truly relate to the story, it means so much to me. Thanks so much for your support!
I’ve heard a few comments wishing there was more on the disentanglement. About ten years pass by in the main narrative, and the process of letting go was a slow, anti-climatic one, despite the scene where I bolt from the mucky campgrounds.
Even though I’ve moved on, those people and experiences are always lurking in my subconscious. In dreams, I’m still hanging out with the people in the book, or I’m stuck back in college or high school. Trickery of the mind.
Can’t wait to check out your memoir! Your writing is witty, sharp and strong. Highly looking forward to reading more of your works in the future!! =)
U got an email?
I am enjoying your insights Lauren.
Found your site on a google looking for some erotic language specific to breeding that I could use in a short story. Google brought me to you and The Truth of Sex. I enjoyed reading your last three posts – after ‘Sex’ I looked at your analysis of Freud & Lewis. That was interesting too.
It’s only now, after having a religious-centric blog under my real name, that I realize the true appeal of blogging. It is a cache, a niche, where one can draw a friendly audience, a choir, if you will, to “preach to.”
Negative comments are rare. Challenges to one’s all penetrating observations (such as mine here) are practically non-existent and when the odd ‘enemy’ aka critic does break through, they can be easily dismissed – not by the blogger, publically, but by their camp followers who rise up with pitchforks and rakes to run the bounder off. Goodbye and don’t let the URL hit you on the ass on your way out; i,e,, never come back. The weather is not good here for your ilk.
Rather, we get our egos stroked. And I wonder if the size of our camp followers correlates with the further devolpment of our own egocentrism.
Trying to take and hold a position on someplace public like facebook is like trying to take the beaches on D-Day. But in our own little blog, in my little blog, we find safe harbour. And Godamn if it don’t feel good! Not as good as coming but close.
The one thing that cemented something for me in finding your site is the interesting, if unrealized (among many bloggers), co-existence of God, religion and erotica/sexuality in the same place – on many blogs across the blogosphere, whether the blogger is antagonistic to religion and a protagonist of things erotic/sexual or vice versa.or even a combination of all of the above.
Good luck to you. You are an intelligent, attractive woman and – a good writer. Well, as Josef Sommer’s newspaper editor McAdam said to Sally Field’s investigative reporter Meg in “Absence of Malice” (1981), “I like you all right.”.
Sincerely, J JS Harshaw, a nom de plume
Dearest Lauren,
We found your work in “Artsland” very interesting and you are most welcome to join our non commercial and non profitable International Artists and Art Lovers Community AthensArt http://athensart-2010.ning.com that counts, up to now, over 4.830 members from 152 countries, and represents “The Positive side of Life” and the certainty that “Friendship through Art can change the World”!
With Love and Friendship,
Eva
Hi, not for publication; would like to interview you on my radio show on UCY.tv and Truth Frequency Radio.
Thanks!
I’m an author – current book on realities of human relationships, myth of permanent sexual monogamy, and the need for more tribal grouping…
http://liamscheff.com/sex
Lauren,
Your words and thoughts are delicious the ideas are easy for anyone to digest.
Your as beautiful as I remember when I lived in
Washington . You have always been wise beyond your years . To me that proves the bodies we exist in are mere fruit to hold the seed . I hope to hear from you Lauren
Thank you. John , Text : 253-278-7299