Mecca Jamilah Sullivan holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Temple University, and a B.A. in Afro-American Studies from Smith College. In her fiction, she explores the intellectual, emotional, and bodily lives of young black women through voice, music, and hip-hop inflected magical realist techniques. For additional information, visit her website: http://www.meccajamilahsullivan.com/

Yasmin Tambiah Ph.D., grew up in Sri Lanka. Trained as a European medievalist, she subsequently researched and published in the areas of sexuality and law in postcolonial states, and gender and militarization. Currently working in research management in Australia, Yasmin has also lived in the USA, with stints in Trinidad, India, England and Spain. Her creative writing has appeared in Conditions, Nethra, Options, Sinister Wisdom and ZineWest , and in The Vintage Book of International Lesbian Fiction (1999) eds. N. Holoch and J. Nestle; Celebrating Sri Lankan Women's English Writing: 1948-2000 (2002) ed. Y. Gooneratne; Award Winning Australian Writing 2014 (2014) ed. C. Brien; and Out of Sri Lanka: Tamil, Sinhala and English poetry from Sri Lanka and its diasporas (2023) eds. S. Trevett, S. Seneviratne and V. Ravinthiran. In 1991, she was a winner in the inaugural round of the Award for Emerging Writers, the Astraea Lesbian Foundation, New York; and won the 2013 ZineWest competition, Western Sydney.

Cheryl Clarke is a black lesbian feminist poet and author of six books of poetry. She co-edited To Be Left with the Body, a literary publication of the AIDS Project Los Angeles for men of color who have sex with men with Steven G. Fullwood in 2008. Thanks to Julie R. Enszer, readers may access a digitized version of her work Narratives at the Lesbian Poetry Archive. In 2018, she co-edited Dump Trump: Legacies of Resistance, a special issue of Sinister Wisdom with Morgan Gwenwald, Stevie Jones, and Red Washburn. Since 2013, she has been one of the co-organizers of the annual Hobart Festival of Women Writers. After living in New Jersey since 1969, she now resides permanently in Hobart, N.Y., the Book Village of the Catskills, where her partner, Barbara Balliet, and she operate the Blenheim Hill New and Used Bookshop. Y’all come visit.

Julie R. Enszer is editor of Sinister Wisdom. Enszer is a scholar and poet. Her scholarship is at the intersection of U.S. history and literature with particular attention to twentieth century U.S. feminist and lesbian histories, literatures, and cultures. By examining lesbian print culture with the tools of history and literary studies, she reconsiders histories of the Women’s Liberation Movement and gay liberation. Her book manuscript, A Fine Bind: Lesbian-Feminist Publishing from 1969 through 2009, tells stories of a dozen lesbian-feminist publishers to consider the meaning of the theoretical and political formations of lesbian-feminism, separatism, and cultural feminism. You can read about her work at www.julierenszer.com.

Sara Youngblood Gregory is an award-winning lesbian journalist, editor, and author. She is the author of the speculative poetry collection DEAD BOYS IN SPACE (YesYes Books 2026.) She writes about power, identity, health, and culture. Formerly, Sara was a Contributing Writer and Editing Fellow for Yes! Magazine, covering LGBTQ equity, politics, and culture. Their work has been featured in the New York Times, The New Republic, Vice, New York Magazine, Teen Vogue, Cosmopolitan, The Guardian, them.us and many others.

Sara was the News and Reporting Spring 2023 Fellow at TransLash Media, covering anti-trans legislation and community organizing in her home state of Florida. Most recently, they were the recipient of the 2023 Curve and NLGJA Award for Emerging Journalists. Connect with her at www.saragregory.org

Rose Norman is a retired professor of English and women's studies who grew up in rural Alabama and now lives in Huntsville, Alabama. Her lifelong interest in stories of women's lives led to scholarly research on American women's autobiography. As general editor of the Southern Lesbian-Feminist Activist Herstory Project, she has interviewed over a hundred lesbians and is now writing a book about the Pagoda, a lesbian intentional community in St. Augustine, FL (1977-c. 1999).

Joan Nestle was born in the Bronx in 1940 and spent most of her life in New York City; in 1958, she entered public lesbian life in the bars of Greenwich Village. She taught writing in the SEEK Program at Queens College from 1965 to 1990. In 1974, she co-founded the Lesbian Herstory Archives which still thrives today in its Brooklyn home. At seventy-three, Nestle is most grateful when she is forced to see with new eyes that which she thought she knew. She is the author of A Restricted Country (Cleis Press, San Francisco, 2003, first published Firebrand Press, Ithaca N.Y., 1987) and A Fragile Union (Cleis Press, San Francisco, 1998) and editor of seven other books exploring the lesbian body and imagination. For her most recent writing, see http://joannestle.com.

Shromona Mandal Shromona Mandal is an American Studies Masters’ candidate at Brown University and received a B.A. in Sociology and Social and Cultural Analysis from New York University. They are applying to PhDs to pursue a project investigating the cultural production of Indian American Hindu elite women and they aim to contribute to a body of scholarship working to dismantle global Hindu nationalism. You can also find them making zines with student organizers.

Yeva Johnson, a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and musician whose work appears in Bellingham Review, Essential Truths: The Bay Area in Color Anthology, Sinister Wisdom, Yemassee, and elsewhere, explores interlocking caste systems and possibilities for human co-existence in our biosphere. Yeva is a past Show Us Your Spines Artist-in-Residence (RADAR Productions/San Francisco Public Library), winner of the 2020 Mostly Water Art & Poetry Splash Contest and 3rd place winner of the 2022 Effie Lee Morris Literary Contest of the Women’s National Book Association, and poet in QTPOC4SHO, a San Francisco Bay Area artists’ collective. She was a Marion Weber Healing Arts Fellow at Mesa Refuge in 2022. Her debut chapbook, Analog Poet Blues, will be published by Nomadic Press in 2023.

Pelaya Arapakis, is a writer, musician and arts and cultural worker living on unceded Wurundjeri land in so-called Australia. She holds a B.A. in History and an M.A. in Arts and Cultural Management from The University of Melbourne. In addition to writing reviews for Sinister Wisdom, she is a co-editor of Sinister Wisdom’s forthcoming issue titled Body of Land. She is passionate about cultivating transnational lesbian and queer communities and exploring the creative and political possibilities that can emerge across borders.

Bell Beecher Pitkin is a lesbian artist and curator from Charlotte, North Carolina, currently living and working in Boston, Massachusetts. For the past three years, Bell has curated the Sinister Wisdom Calendar, highlighting the importance of lesbian art and visual culture while also collaborating on a range of other creative projects. As a photographer, Bell is interested in building on the legacy of queer and lesbian artists and activists from the 1970s-80s, using the camera as both a tool for self-reflection and a medium for visibility and expression. In addition to their artistic practice, Bell works full time as a curator and gallery manager in downtown Boston. More about Bell and their work can be found at https://beecher.cargo.site/info.

Gabe Tejada is a Filipino emerging arts writer based in Naarm. Their work has been published by Archer, Kill Your Darlings (KYD), the National Gallery of Australia and Artlink, among others. Currently, they are pursuing a Masters of Art Curatorship at the University of Melbourne.