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Cover of Living as a Lesbian

Sinister Wisdom

Living as a Lesbian

Cheryl Clarke

€7.00

Sinister Wisdom 91 is a joint release: an issue of Sinister Wisdom and a trade paperback book. Living as a Lesbian, co-published with A Midsummer Night’s Press, is issue 91 of Sinister Wisdom and the second book in a new series, Sapphic Classics.

Living as a Lesbian is Cheryl Clarke’s paean to lesbian life. Filled with sounds from her childhood in Washington, DC, the riffs of jazz musicians, and bluesy incantations, Living as a Lesbian sings like a marimba, whispering “i am, i am in love with you.”
Living as a Lesbian chronicles Clarke’s years of literary and political activism with anger, passion, and determination. Clarke mourns the death of Kimako Baraka (“sister of famous artist brother”), celebrates the life of Indira Gandhi, and chronicles all kinds of disasters—natural and human-made. The world is large in Living as a Lesbian but also personal and intimate. These poems are closely observed and finely wrought, with Clarke’s characteristic charm and wit shining throughout.

In 1986, Living as a Lesbian captured the vitality and volatility of the lesbian world; today, in a world both changed and unchanged, Clarke’s poems continue to illuminate our lives and make new meanings for Living as a Lesbian.

recommendations

Cover of Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker 1974-1989

Sinister Wisdom

Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker 1974-1989

Julie R. Enszer

Poets Audre Lorde and Pat Parker first met in 1969; they began exchanging letters regularly five years later. Over the next fifteen years, Lorde and Parker shared ideas, advice, and confidences through the mail. They sent each other handwritten and typewritten letters and postcards often with inserted items including articles, money, and video tapes.

Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker 1974-1989 gathers this correspondence for readers to eavesdrop on Lorde and Parker. They discuss their work as writers as well as intimate details of their lives, including periods when each lived with cancer. Sister Love is a rare opportunity to glimpse inside the minds and friendship of two great twentieth century poets.

Cover of The Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition

Sinister Wisdom

The Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition

Judy Grahn

In 1985, Judy Grahn boldly declared that lesbians have a poetic tradition and mapped it from Sappho to the present day in the groundbreaking book, The Highest Apple. In this new and updated edition of The Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition, Grahn revisits the original text with her characteristic ferocious intellect, passion for historical research, careful close readings, and dynamic storytelling. Grahn situates poetry by Sappho, Emily Dickinson, Amy Lowell, H.D., Gertrude Stein, Adrienne Rich Paula Gunn Allen, Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, and Olga Broumas as central to lesbian culture—and more radically as central to society as a whole.

This new edition of The Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition includes Grahn’s in depth analysis of poetic work by her friend and comrade Pat Parker and suggests a transactional approach to poetry as uncovering layers of the self. Grahn assembled this text in conversation with two younger lesbian poets, Alicia Mountain and Alyse Knorr, demonstrating the continued relevance and dynamism of The Highest Apple for contemporary readers. A new introduction by Grahn, a foreword by Alyse Knorr, and editor notes by Alicia Mountain along with six responses by contemporary poets Donika Kelly, Kim Shuck, Serena Chopra, Zoe Tuck, Saretta Morgan, and Khadijah Queen highlight the on-going significance of The Highest Apple to readers, writers, and thinkers.

Cover of Celebrating the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival

Sinister Wisdom

Celebrating the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival

Sinister Wisdom

Periodicals €10.00

Sinister Wisdom 103: Celebrating the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival honors the forty-year legacy of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (1976–2015). Sinister Wisdom 103: Celebrating the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival celebrates this embodiment of radical feminist separatist collaboration, transformational self-defined autonomous spaces, a commitment to sisterhood and matriarchal culture, and a musical city sprung from the earth for one week in the woods.

A collective of five womyn each with a deep connection to Fest operated by consensus to create this issue. Striving to represent a range of womyn’s voices, values, traditions, and experiences of Fest, the collective highlighted what Fest has meant to generations of womyn, documented its chronology, and bore witness to the power of this community. Sinister Wisdom 103: Celebrating the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival includes womyn from multiple races, geographies, sexualities, generations, and gender and other social identities. Just as Fest brought together womyn from various backgrounds, our collection includes a range of artistic experience, from seasoned authors and photographers to those womyn new to publishing.
Sinister Wisdom 103: Celebrating the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival remembers the transformations, possibilities, and hopes for spaces cultivating the ongoing empowerment of womyn.

Cover of MsHeresies 6 — A Manager

Rietlanden Women's Office

MsHeresies 6 — A Manager

Caren Beilin

MsHeresies 6 publishes an edited chapter from Caren Beilin’s forthcoming novel Sea, Poison (New Directions, 2025). It is typeset together with reworked material from the archive of the Neapolitan feminist artist collective Le Nemesiache, active between 1969 and 1995.

Cover of Radical Muses (Sinister Wisdom nr. 113)

Sinister Wisdom

Radical Muses (Sinister Wisdom nr. 113)

Julie R. Enszer

Sinister Wisdom 113: Radical Muses features an eclectic array of contemporary poetry, prose, and art by lesbians from around the world, including new work by: Andrea Assaf, Tara Shea Burke, Cheryl Clarke, Marina Chirkova, Estela González, Barbara Haas, Nancy E. Lake, Vi Khi Nao, H. Ní Aódagaín and much more!

Cover of Tout geste est renversement – Every gesture is reversal

Gevaert Editions

Tout geste est renversement – Every gesture is reversal

Chloe Chignell, Laurianne Bixhain

Tout geste est renversement – Every gesture is reversal is a publication by artist Laurianne Bixhain comprising an imahe captured and silkscreen printed by Bixhain and a text written by Chloe Chignell. The work addresses the potential for mutual transformation between language and materials, whether human or non human. How does language traverse the body? What are its resonances? How does it shape physical presence, gestures or thoughts? 

A2 silkscreen printed poster
Designed by Morgane Le Ferec.
Printed in 300 Copies. 

Cover of Natural Enemies Of Books: A Messy History Of Women In Printing And Typography

Occasional Papers

Natural Enemies Of Books: A Messy History Of Women In Printing And Typography

Sara Kaaman, Maryam Fanni and 1 more

Natural Enemies of Books is a response to the groundbreaking 1937 publication 'Bookmaking on the Distaff Side', which brought together contributions by women printers, illustrators, authors, typographers, and typesetters, highlighting the print industry’s inequalities and proposing a takeover of the history of the book. Edited by feminist graphic design collective MMS, the publication includes newly commissioned essays and poems, conversations with former typesetters Inger Humlesjö, Ingegärd Waaranperä, Gail Cartmail, and Megan Downey, and reprints of the original book and other publications.

Cover of Fanzine Grrrls

Monsa

Fanzine Grrrls

Gemma Villegas

Making a fanzine is an act of rebellion, even more so if it is published and produced by a woman. The grrrls of today use them to inspire countless young people around the world, to take control of their lives and to create their own culture. These homemade publications are a quick and cheap way to spread their ideas and dismantle the usual stereotypes. Traditionally hand-drawn, photocopied, and stapled together, the format of fanzines are now as diverse as their subject matter, with online platforms and social networks fast becoming the norm. The fanzine is more alive than ever!

Gemma Villegas runs her graphic design studio based from Barcelona. She works in close dialog with commissioners and collaborators on a broad range of projects, including visual identities, exhibitions, publications, and digital platforms, overseeing the creative process during all the phases of a project. Her work is characterized by a fresh and powerful visual language focused on detail with special attention to typography.