people

Shereen Inayatulla

General Co-Editor

Shereen Inayatulla is professor of English at York College, CUNY. Her areas of research include composition/literacy studies, autoethnography, and queer theory. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including the Journal of Lesbian Studies and the Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric. She is currently working on an autoethnographic project that celebrates the complexities of queer, immigrant storytelling practices. 

Dána-Ain Davis

(photo by: Alex Irklievski)

Managing Editor

Dána-Ain Davis is Professor of Urban Studies at Queens College and is also on the faculty of the PhD Programs in Anthropology and Critical Psychology at the Graduate Center.  Presently, she is serving her second terms as the director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society at the Graduate Center. Davis’ work covers two broad domains: Black feminist ethnography and the dynamics of race and racism. She is the author or co-editor of five books.  Her most recent book Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth (2019) was published by NYU Press. Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth (NYU Press 2019). The book received the Eileen Basker Memorial Prize from the Society for Medical Anthropology; The Senior Book Prize from the Association of Feminist Anthropology; was named a Finalist for the 2020 PROSE Award in the Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology category, given by the Association of American Publishers. The Victor Turner Ethnographic Writing Award Committee of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology awarded the book an Honorable Mention. The book was also listed in New York Magazine’s Strategist column in an article, “Anti-Racist Reading List”

https://nymag.com/strategist/article/anti-racist-reading-list.html?fbclid=IwAR2RmW7CeOmgIYouAVlJnq8ahp9UMtJhfIH6T_6xVR2oXnhC8JffR9mjgOo  and The Black Feminism Book List  https://bookshop.org/lists/black-feminism-book-list​.

Davis is the recipient of the 2023 Brocher Foundation Fellowship in Switzerland. Davis was nominated and awarded the 2021 Association of Marquette University Women Chair in Humanistic Studies at Marquette University. Davis is a doula and that she co-leads free birth education workshops with midwife, Nubia Earth Martin in Yonkers, New York.

Davis has been engaged in social justice, particularly reproductive justice and racial justice for over 30 years. During that time, she has worked with a number of national reproductive justice organizations including the New York City Department of Health’s Sexual and Reproductive Justice initiative; the National Network of Abortion Funds. She was co-chair of NARAL-NY and she served on the New York State Governor’s Task Force on Maternal Mortality and Disparate Racial Outcomes. Currently Dána-Ain serves on the Birth Equity Collaborative in San Francisco, CA, and is on the board of Collective Power.

Kendra Sullivan

Managing Editor

Kendra Sullivan is the director of the Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research at the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she also acts as publisher of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Archive Initiative and general program director. She has a master’s in Sustainability and Environmental Education from the CUNY Graduate Center, where she is currently pursuing her PhD in English, with a focus on the environmental humanities. Her writing has appeared and is forthcoming in BOMB, F.R. DAVID, and C magazine. Her artwork has been exhibited at  the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, NY; The Bureau for Open Culture at MASS MoCA; and The Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard University. Her curatorial projects include: Sea Worthy (2011), Ed Sanders: Seeking the Glyph (2015), Accompaniment (2015), and Resistance After Nature (2017). She has performed her own works at the Banff Centre, Alberta; Dexter Sinister, NY; and tenletters, Glasgow; and as part of Robert Ashley’s The Trail of Anne Opie Wehrer at the Whitney Biennial in 2014 and at 356 Mission in 2016. She is the grateful recipient of grants and residencies from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Fine Arts, the Banff Centre, and the Montello Foundation, among others. She is a member of the eco-art collective Mare Liberum and co-founder of the Sunview Luncheonette, a community space for art and politics run out of a stopped-in-time diner in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Julie R. Enszer

Poetry Editor

Julie R. 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. Her research has appeared or is forthcoming in Southern Cultures, Journal of Lesbian Studies, American Periodicals, WSQ, Frontiers, and other journals.

Enszer is the author of four collections of poetry, Avowed (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016), Lilith’s Demons (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2015), Sisterhood (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013), and Handmade Love (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2010). She is editor of The Complete Works of Pat Parker (Sinister Wisdom/A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2016) and Milk & Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2011). Milk & Honey was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry. She is the editor of Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal, and a regular book reviewer for the Lambda Book Report and Calyx.

Enszer has her MFA and PhD from the University of Maryland.

For more information www.JulieREnszer.com

Cheryl Clarke

Poetry Editor

Cheryl Clarke is a black lesbian feminist poet and the author of five books of poetry: Narratives: Poems in the Tradition of Black Women (1982), Living as a Lesbian (1986), Humid Pitch (1989), Experimental Love (1993), By My Precise Haircut, winner of the 2016 Hilary Tham Award from Word Works Books; and the chapbooks, Your Own Lovely Bosom (2014) and Targets (2018).Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the journals Conditions, Sinister Wisdom, Callaloo, Black World, African American Literary Review, and the iconic anthologies: This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color, and Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology.Visit her at: www.cherylclarke.com

JP Howard

Poetry Editor

JP Howard is an educator, literary activist, curator and community builder. Her debut poetry collection, SAY/MIRROR (The Operating System), was a Lambda Literary finalist. She is also the author of bury your love poems here (Belladonna*) and co-editor of Sinister Wisdom Journal Black Lesbians–We Are the Revolution! JP was a featured author in Lambda Literary’s LGBTQ Writers in Schools Program and has received fellowships from Cave Canem, VONA, and Lambda Literary. She curates Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon. Her poetry is widely anthologized. JP is also an Editor-At-Large of Mom Egg Review VOX online.Eight of JP’s poems will be published in 2021 in Harlequin Creature Issue 10, a small press imprint, as a stand-alone project, that is also part of a greater collective, for their final issue.Find out more at http://www.jp-howard.com

Keisha-Gaye Anderson

Prose Editor

Keisha-Gaye Anderson is a Jamaican-born poet, writer, visual artist, and media professional based in Brooklyn, NY. She is the author of Gathering the Waters (Jamii Publishing 2014), Everything Is Necessary (Willow Books 2019), and A Spell for Living (Agape 2020), which received Agape’s Editors’ Choice recognition for the Numinous Orisons, Luminous Origin Literary Award. The multimedia e-book, available for download at https://bloggingthenuminous.com/morning-house/, features Keisha’s original art and audio poems scored to music composed for this project.Keisha is a past participant of the VONA. Voices and Callaloo writing workshops, a former fellow of the North Country Institute for Writers of Color, and was short-listed for the Small Axe Literary Competition.In 2018, Keisha was selected as a Brooklyn Public Library Artist in Residence. She is the recipient of the Poetic Icon Award from her alma mater Syracuse University. Keisha holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from The City College, CUNY. Learn more at www.keishagaye.ink and find her most recent book at https://bloggingthenuminous.com/morning-house/

Vi Khi Nao

Prose Editor

Lauren Cherelle

Prose Editor

Lauren Cherelle is the Managing Editor and Creative Director of BLF Press. She is a fiction editor, graphic designer and digital marketer with an MBA from the University of Tennessee and writing certifications from the University of Louisville. She supports the queer writing community as co-founder of the Black Lesbian Literary Collective, through writing and publishing workshops, and has also served as a Lambda Literary judge. Her creative work reflects the lives of Southern Black girls and women. Her most recent writing was published in Sinister Wisdom 122: Writing Communities and Black from the Future: A Collection of Black Speculative Writing. Join Lauren on Twitter and Instagram: @laurencre8s.