Esmé Louise James
Esmé Louise James is a PhD Candidate and viral digital creator. Kinky History was published by Pantera Press in 2023, and is set for publication worldwide in 2024.
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Esmé Louise James (@esme.louisee) is best known for her series Kinky History which has amassed more than three million followers across her social media accounts. Esmé is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne; her thesis traces an aesthetic of the erotic across eighteenth-century literature. She has produced a range of non-fiction articles for publications such as the Age, the ABC and the Conversation, as well as short stories and poetry, for publications such as Hardie Grant Press and Archer. In 2020, she was listed in the Top 30 Emerging Writers by SBS Australia. Esmé’s book Kinky History: The Stories of Our Intimate Lives, Past and Present was published by Pantera Press in Australia, and TarcherPerigee worldwide, in 2024.
Esmé presents the popular Kinky History podcast, which charted to 1# History Podcast in Australia within a month of its launch. In 2022, Esmé gave talk at TEDxSydney entitled ‘Writing kinky sex back into the history pages’. Esmé was the recipient of Screen Australia’s Every Voice initiative funding her TikTok series, SexTistics, alongside Dr Susan James. In recognition of her groundbreaking education online, Esmé was nominated for Best Digital Creator at the 2022 AACTA Awards. In 2023, she was the recipient of the University of Melbourne’s Rising Star Alumni Award.