Learning is a reciprocal, life-long process. Elders learn from young people who bring new experiences and new knowledges to us all. Learning is multifaceted and continuous; all of us at every different age learn together and from one another.
Author: Julie Enszer
Julie R. Enszer is a scholar and poet. She's currently the editor of Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal, and a regular book reviewer for the Lambda Book Report and Calyx. Julie's research has appeared or is forthcoming in Southern Cultures, Journal of Lesbian Studies, American Periodicals, WSQ, Frontiers and other journals; she is the author of the poetry collections Avowed, Lilith’s Demons, Sisterhood and Handmade Love and the editor of The Complete Works of Pat Parker and Milk & Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry.
Language As City: Beth Brant in Detroit
Sinister Wisdom’s newest Sapphic Classic, A Generous Spirit: Selected Work by Beth Brant, releases into the world today. All of the Sapphic Classics are special to me, but this one repays an important debt from my youth.
Tracking Our Way Through Time
In some ways, publishing a paper wall calendar and a blank book journal feels anachronistic in our digital world. At the same time, these new print documents connect me to a long lesbian history and herstory.
The Editor’s Plight: One Issue, Then Another and Another
The title is perhaps melodramatic—but publishing a quarterly periodical means that occasionally there is scrambling to pull together an issue. This is particularly true when the journal, like Sinister Wisdom, is an all-volunteer enterprise.
More Sinister, More Wise
Nine is a magical number. In Greek mythology, there were nine muses; cats have nine lives; there are nine circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno. 2019 also marks the beginning of my ninth year editing and publishing “Sinister Wisdom.”
Golden Mermaids: Lesbian Creativity Through the Ages
“Sinister Wisdom” as a journal has archived lesbian writing over the past 43 years. Lesbians write, and we enter it into the record.
DUMP TRUMP: Lesbian Writers Weigh in on Resistance and the Midterms
The regime remains malleable—patriarchy, misogyny, white supremacy, heterosexual supremacy, neoliberalism, capitalism—but boisterous resistance is our legacy, and the spirit that invites us to engage another day.
Fabulous Feminist Fiction for the End of Summer
Summer days spent with a good book are coming to an end—which gives feminists all the more reason to rush out and read these before fall comes.
Five Feminist Poems for National Poetry Month: “Songs for the People” by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Born in 1825 to free African American parents, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a prolific journalist and poet as well as an abolitionist and suffragist. In “Songs for the People,” she imagines poetry filling “the world with peace.”
Five Feminist Poems for National Poetry Month: “The Letter” by Amy Lowell
“The Letter” is playful and fanciful, celebrating the beloved through letter writing—although in the final stanza, Amy Lowell reveals the complexity of her emotions.