Ivy Marie is a femme poet, editor, and artist currently living and creating in the south. She recently graduated from Mercer University after studying literature, creative writing, art, and women's and gender studies throughout her undergraduate years.

Professionally, Ivy has written and edited for several newspapers and literary journals; she interned as a copyeditor with Mercer University Press for two years; her poems have been nationally recognized in various contests; and her writing has been published with Porkbelly Press, Glass Mountain, and the Atlanta Review, among other places. While she was based in Macon, she partnered with the local library system to facilitate a youth-led poetry workshop to connect young, underrepresented writers with opportunities and platforms to share their stories.

Personally, Ivy is passionate about radical gentleness, healing, and lesbian love and joy, and her work reflects those themes. Similar to bell hooks, she's interested in love as a subject of study. Her current project is a meditation on lesbian longing with a focus on art and literature. A cross between an epic poem, research document, and mosaic essay, her project engages in dialogue with historical and contemporary lesbians who have yearned and connects them to her own memories and experiences. What makes a lesbian history? What makes a lesbian piece of art? What makes a lesbian? What is this soft thread that connects us?

While at Sinister Wisdom, Ivy's work has primarily been concentrated on editing. She copyedited Sinister Wisdom 127: On Transfer, content-edited Rose Norman's upcoming book on Florida's lesbian Pagoda, edits the Sinister Wisdom e-newsletters, and is constructing Sinister Wisdom's style guide. She's also written a featurette and a book review (upcoming in issue 127!), organized Sinister Wisdom 127's New Lesbian Writing section, and transcribed We Lift Our Voices by Mae V. Cowdery. She's looking forward to being involved in Sinister Wisdom's Transfeminisms issue and a couple of archive assembly projects.

Ivy in a collage self-portrait.

Ivy in her studio.

Ivy at a poetry reading.