Both as a historian and as a fiction writer, Hanne Blank has questioned how we relate to our bodies and our sexuality, from gender norms to fat-shaming. Raised in Cleveland and trained as a classical musician, Blank earned a bachelor’s degree from the New England Conservatory, a master’s from Indiana University, and was a fellow of the Tanglewood Institute before becoming a writer, editor, and historian. She worked for several years as co-editor of Scarletletters.com and Scarleteen.com, associate editor of Sojourner: The Women’s Forum, editor of several volumes of feminist and body-positive erotica, and writer of several fat-positive guidebooks on health and relationships. She then began training as a historian at Emory University and has turned to writing social histories, including Virgin: The Untouched History in 2007, and Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality in 2012. From 2004–2005 she was Scholar of the Institute for Teaching and Research on Women at Towson University in Maryland. She has taught at Brandeis and Tufts, and has lectured at universities across the country. As of 2015 she serves on the Advisory Committee to the Emory Office of LGBT Life.