Authors bare all for PEN Canada

The nude calendar has had countless incarnations since the movie Calendar Girls made it the de rigeur fundraiser in 2003. There have been nude calendars in support of housing organizations and cancer groups and more intriguingly, firefighters.

The latest group to agree to bare all is Canadian authors. They're doing it in support of PEN Canada. The Bare It All for Books Campaign for PEN aims to create a 2014 calendar to raise money for its programs supporting free speech and Canadian literature. So nude authors it is, rather than baring all in the figurative sense.

On Tuesday, the PEN site released the names of 12 Canadian writers who have agreed to pose for the calendar: They are: Angie Abdou, Trevor Cole, Farzana Doctor, Dave Bidini, Miranda Hill, Daniel MacIvor, Yasuko Thanh, Canada Reads winner Terry Fallis, Sachiko Murakami, Vincent Lam, Saleema Nawaz and Yann Martel. In the great tradition of writing, much is left to the imagination.

And the sequel is an indiegogo campaign that attempts to engage donors with a blogs, tweets and other plot devices. The women behind the campaign — Amanda Leduc and Allegra Young (above) — are hiding their talents behind Tamara Faith Berger's Maidenhead, one of a new breed of made-in-Canada erotica, and Ross King's Defiant Spirits, which explores the Group of Seven.