sucking dick for syringes by Heather Edney

Sucking Dick For Syringes is a novel, an autobiography, a memoir, an autofiction, an ethnography, an anti-fiction; it is simultaneously all and none of these things. The text was written by Heather Edney between 1991-1998, spanning a period of time in which Edney was helming a needle exchange as a nineteen-year-old, raising a child whose mother had died from AIDS-related illness, publishing the zine junkphood, and presenting at national and international harm reduction conferences as one of very few people (perhaps the only one) openly public about her experience as a drug user. The text was written in small bursts, mostly at the site of a recurring complex trauma, which lends the text the urgency and honesty of life in the present. The title Sucking Dick For Syringes operates as a metaphor as well as a passionate call for transparency, asking what did you live through in your twenties? Who did you love and how did you love them?

SDFS is a 110 page risograph artist book using Brick, Flo Pink, Light Lime, and Sky Blue inks on French Bubblegum paper and sew bound with a Singer series 7 at Chute Studio in Oakland California, Spring 2025.

SDFS will debut as part of Love Rules: The Harm Reduction Archives of Heather Edney and Richard Berkowitz at MOMA PS1, with copies shipping in the first week of May.

Content note: contains mentions of drug use, sexual violence, and death.