Beth Stephens

Beth Stephens is an artist and filmmaker with a Ph.D. in Performance Studies. She grew up in Appalachia, which has had a lasting influence on her work in environmental justice. Stephens is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she helped develop the first MFA in Environmental Art and Social Practice. Stephens produced and directed Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story in 2014. This film is considered the first feature-length environmental documentary. Water Makes Us Wet: an Ecosexual Adventure (2017) and most recently Playing with Fire: an Ecosexual Emergency (2025) completes this trilogy of queer environmental documentary explorations. Her work has won several awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Eureka, and Rydell Fellowship, plus several San Francisco Arts Commission grants.
In 2002, Stephens fell in love with Annie Sprinkle, and they have worked together collaboratively ever since, creating visual art, performance, theater, film, and happenings. They launched the Ecosex Movement in 2008 when they married the Earth in 2008. Career highlights include Wedding to the Sea at the Venice Biennale, documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens, Greece, and screening their documentary, Water Makes Us Wet, at NY MoMA. Their book, published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2021, Assuming the Ecosexual Position—Earth as Lover, chronicles the first 20 years of their adventures in life and art.