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.

During the summer of 2022, Bell Beecher Pitkin is working as an intern at Sinister Wisdom. We are pleased to introduce Bell to the Sinister Wisdom community.

Bell Beecher Pitkin is a Lesbian artist and student who lives and works between North Carolina and Boston, studying at Wellesley College. They work primarily utilizes 35mm and medium format photography, experimental print methods, and non-narrative video to explore themes of youth, memory, and identity often situated in the landscape and mysticism of the Southern United States. Currently, Bell is pursuing their bachelor’s degree in Cinema and Media Studies and will be completing a studio art thesis this year which studies folk art, vernacular photography, and family mythologies in the new American South.

Thus far, their work at Sinister Wisdom has included proofreading and editing, helping to organize and facilitate the ALFA 50th Anniversary event, and imagining a special art project for Sinister Wisdom’s 50th anniversary.

Bell Beecher Pitkin

Eclipse Viewing, digital print

At Tupelo, silver gelatin print

Facing the Hill, silver collodion tintype

Zoe, 35mm color film scan

Sydney Schmidt (she/they) is a queer student journalist and undergraduate at George Washington University. They pursue a degree in Journalism & Mass Communication and International Affairs, with a concentration in Contemporary Cultures & Societies. She is a staff writer for College Magazine, blog manager for GW’s chapter of The Women’s Network, as well as Actions Deputy for GW’s chapter of the climate justice organization Sunrise. Her creative writing has appeared in GW’s student literary magazine Capitol Letters.

With Sinister Wisdom, Sydney is compiling a bibliography of poet and activist Terri Jewell’s work, and is enjoying the opportunity to learn more about Jewell’s writings, as well as the publications she appeared in. Additionally, Sydney is working on compiling and creating a design for an Editor Guidebook for Sinister Wisdom’s guest editors. Her transcription project is Hungerheart: The Story of a Soul, a 1915 semi-autobiographical novel written by Christabel Marshall.

Sydney Schmidt

During the summer of 2022, Caitlin Abadir-Mullally (kt) is a non-residential creative endeavors fellow at Sinister Wisdom. We are pleased to introduce kt to the Sinister Wisdom community.

Caitlin Abadir-Mullally (kt) is a Coptic-American Lesbian artist and independent archivist based in Philadelphia. She works to create communities for those who live between spaces. Her research dives into fear, hybridity, queerness, collective thinking, grief, and cultural loss. Caitlin Abadir-Mullally works in sculpture, video, performance, and relationship building. Caitlin Abadir-Mullally is pursuing a master’s degree in library and information science with a focus in archival studies. She is passionate about documenting diasporic queer Southwest Asian and North Afrikan joy and complexity, and the agency of the living to decide how their narratives are preserved in her project Saffron.

Saffron is an LGBTQ+ Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) archive. The archive documents, preserves, and shares access to celebration, stories, and moments of joy by diasporic, queer SWANA artists and creators. Saffron is a cherished spice that is versatile in dying fabrics, coloring and flavoring cuisine across the world and involvement with ritual that brings us close to the divine. These qualities mirror my experience of the LGBTQ+ SWANA diaspora. Saffron was incubated during my fellowship with YallaPunk in 2021. This archive is funded by the Leeway Art and Change Grant and will be expanded during my residency with Sinister Wisdom in 2022.