NATASHA: Hi Liz! Thank you for the interview. Can you tell our readers about yourself and how long you have been a writer?
LIZ DOHERTY: Thank you, Natasha, for the opportunity to introduce myself and my writing journey to other Bareback readers. I have had dozens of gigs in my life, everything from editing at a large corporation to delivering singing balloon bouquets to being a stay-at-home parent. I choose not to define myself by my employment but can safely call myself a writer. My rigorous private school education encouraged me to write daily about things I cared about and my journalism studies in college taught me to write clearly and directly about the world around me. I have journaled regularly since high school, and my 2006-2009 journals were invaluable in the creation of Not Sure What I Want Tonight: My Sex-First Search for Love in the Craigslist Personals.
NATASHA: Can you tell our readers about your latest book? And how did you come up with the title?
LIZ DOHERTY: I initially published a collection of sexy essays about my Craigslist encounters in 2011, under the title Not Sure What I Want Tonight. An excerpt from that collection appeared here in Bareback Magazine in December as “Emergency Man.” After a life-changing event in 2021, I transformed the collection into a memoir, bringing to light my background and history and exploring my motivations in seeking sex in this way. Each chapter of the book begins with one of my Craigslist personals posts, and “Not Sure What I Want Tonight” was the headline of one of them. I feel it accurately expresses the exploratory nature of my search for love and passion after my divorce. The new book was published with a new subtitle “My Sex-First Search for Love in the Craigslist Personals,” to distinguish it from the earlier version.
NATASHA: Why did you decide to write a book about your personal experiences dating people from Craigslist personals?
LIZ DOHERTY: Older women can still be desirable and needn’t be embarrassed to seek what they need sexually. I know my behavior was remarkable in that it wasn’t what the world traditionally expects of women my age, and I wanted to share that.
NATASHA: How do your family and friends feel about the book?
LIZ DOHERTY: Liz Doherty is a pen name. When I started writing it in 2008, I thought I’d have to keep the book completely anonymous so that no one in my life found it. The introduction to the new book describes in detail my reasons for leaving my marriage in search of sex and passion. My adult daughters and ex-husband now know about it but are choosing not to read it. The older I’ve gotten, the less self-conscious I’ve become about my history with the Craigslist personals. While there are still people I’d rather never know I wrote it, I did what I did and I’m still me: a mother, a neighbor, a friend. If people are shocked or put off by my story, so be it.
NATASHA: What genre do you like to write?
LIZ DOHERTY: That’s easy: memoir. Despite several attempts at fiction, I’m not able to create characters and can only write with myself as the protagonist. I’ve had an episodic and eventful life and have no shortage of true stories to tell.
NATASHA: If you had one word to describe your book what would that be?
LIZ DOHERTY: One word? I guess I’d have to go with “brave.” I bared all when I was frank and direct about the open and provocative world of the Craigslist personals and my sexual adventures there. Craigslist was a place where I could anonymously express my deepest desires, ask for what I wanted, and often get it, and I share those encounters in the book. I miss the personals terribly since they were removed from Craigslist in 2018.
NATASHA: Can you share with our readers any future projects that you are working on?
LIZ DOHERTY: Although my computer is filled with all kinds of writing—personal essays, a smattering of poetry, an unfinished biography of my mother, attempts at fiction—as of now, I have no plans for another book. I do have an extensive stash of naughty stories of Craigslist meetings that didn’t make it into the memoir that I’m sure other Bareback readers would find titillating, and I write and publish essays about other episodes in my life that are of more general interest under a different name.
NATASHA: How can our readers learn more about you and your books?
LIZ DOHERTY: My website, www.lizdohertyauthor.com, is still under development, but includes the basics; I will add more there as time goes on. As of today, this memoir is the best way to get to know me. I’m always happy to hear from readers at lizdohertyauthor@gmail.com. Not Sure What I Want Tonight: My Sex-First Search for Love in the Craigslist Personals is available on Amazon in the US as both an e-book ($3.99/free with Kindle Unlimited) and a paperback ($13.99).
About Liz Dherty:
For the past fourteen years, the reclusive Liz Doherty has written candidly about her adventures in the San Francisco Craigslist personals in the mid-2000s. She took down her popular blog, Liz Doherty’s Dirty Words, as she left the Bay Area in 2013 and returned to her East Coast birthplace after a lengthy stop in northern New England. Liz holds a BA in Journalism and works as a freelance copy editor. When she isn’t singing karaoke or watching reruns of Friends, she listens to her scratched classic rock albums while cooking, gardening, editing, writing, and playing Scrabble.
