Sinister Wisdom’s DUMP TRUMP! ISSUE

deadline for submissions: 
January 31, 2018
full name / name of organization: 
Siniste Wisdom
contact email: 

Sinister Wisdom’s DUMP TRUMP! ISSUE 

Sinister Wisdom’s DUMP TRUMP! ISSUE  After 41 years of publishing, Sinister Wisdom is still renowned for its commitment to lesbian visibility and supporting work that keeps the word “lesbian” in bold relief. What better way to sustain our prominence than to produce an issue marking the Trump Era in lesbian history? Or marking the lesbian history of the Trump Era?To this end, we are looking for serious, satirical, and humorous writing in various forms, e.g., essay, excerpts from correspondence, journal entries, poetry, short fiction, novel excerpts, and critical articles that reflect lesbian ideas and notions of what it will take to unseat the Trump regime. If we are not fortunate enough to oust him before his first term is up, can we make him a “one-term” president? We also encourage the submission of visual art, e.g., photographs, graphics, poster art, and cartoon art. In an era in which language is corrupted, concepts of the heterosexual “national family” are extolled, the “brute force” narrative dominates, difference is pathologized, and art and education are being defunded and censored, how do we still sustain literature as radical resistance? In keeping with Sinister Wisdom’s tradition of literary radicalism and legacies of resistance, we would like manuscripts that address issues of immigration for LGBTQ people, lesbians in mainstream politics, the exercise of privilege in current feminist, LGBTQ, left political organizing, fascism historically and in our midst, lesbian traditions of resisting repression, scapegoating of trans people, the price of gender nonconformity in the Trump era, racial profiling, “grab them by the pussy,” and ideas of exile. The guest editors will curate a diversity of womyn’s voices, values, traditions, and experiences of lesbian/queer experiences of Trump as it has changed and connected generations. We encourage lesbians/queers from all races, ethnicities, ages, abilities, religions, and gender identities to submit. We will explore what Trump politics has meant to so many womyn, document its chronology, and commemorate the power of lesbian/queer art and activism against a hostile state.We will be adhering to Sinister Wisdom’s publishing guidelines, which follow the Chicago Manual of Style. If you are not familiar with these guidelines, please contact the editors at  and we will assist with any questions you may have. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2018; however, early submissions are encouraged and appreciated. Please submit electronically at www.sinisterwisdom.org/submit. Guest Editors: Cheryl Clarke is the author of five books of poetry, the most recent of which is By My Precise Haircut(2016); the critical study, After Mecca: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement (2005), and her collected works The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry 1980-2005 (2006). Her writing appeared in the iconic This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (eds. Gloria Anzaldua and Cherríe Moraga, 1982) and Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (ed. Barbara Smith, 1984). With Steven G. Fulllwood, she co-edited To Be Left with the Body (2008), one of a series of publications produced by AIDS Project/LA and GMHC for men of color having sex with men. She was an editor (1981-1990) of Conditions, a feminist magazine with an emphasis on writing by lesbians, founded in 1977. She retired from Rutgers University in 2013, after 41 years. Since 2013, she has served as one of the organizers of the annual Festival of Women Writers in Hobart, N.Y., the Book Village of the Catskills. Morgan Gwenwald is currently an Associate Librarian at the State University of New York at New Paltz where she is the Head of Special Collections. She has also taught in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program on campus. Prior to this she was the Executive Director of In the Life (the PBS LGBTQ TV series), worked as an MSW (at Fountain House, Columbia University, Senior Action in a Gay Environment and Stony Brook University) and also worked at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. She is an established photographer (widely published in the Women’s and LGBTQ press) and has served as a volunteer coordinator at the Lesbian Herstory Archives for over 20 years. She is working on a major digitization of her archive of negatives of the women’s, lesbian and LGBTQ communities. Amy Washburn, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of English and Co-Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Kingsborough Community College (CUNY). She also is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Hunter College (CUNY). Her articles appear in Journal for the Study of Radicalism, Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and Journal of Lesbian Studies. Her poetry collection Crestview Tree Woman was published by Finishing Line Press. She co-edited Sinister Wisdom 103: Celebrating the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. She is a coordinator at the Lesbian Herstory Archives and of the Rainbow Book Fair.​