Launch of The Highest Apple by Judy Grahn

Sinister Wisdom’s Sapphic Classics continue to delight and amaze. The bonus issue this year is a new edition of Judy Grahn’s marvelous book, The Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition. This new edition features an expanded section on the work of Pat Parker, a new introduction by Judy Grahn, a foreword by Alyse Knorr, an afterword by Alicia Mountain, and six responses by contemporary to this vital work by a collection of younger poets and writers. Judy Grahn was joined by the contributors to this new edition to celebrate this beloved book on Tuesday, November 28, 2023.

Matchmaking in the Archives

How do lesbians and queer women use archives? What insight and treasures to archives offer to lesbians who are not historians? Interdisciplinary artist and teacher E.G. Crichton explored these questions through an artist's residency at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. She paired artists with archives held by the Historical Society and curated an exhibition of the work in response to these archives and now documents the project in Matchmaking in the Archive. On Tuesday, November 14, 2023, E.G. was joined by contributors to the book for a lively discussion about archives as inspiration, provocation, and encouragement.

Sinister Wisdom 130: We Teach Sex (to Everyone!)

Edited by Kristy Lin Billuni and July Westhale and featuring work from Catherine Crouch, Rage Hezekiah, Kimberly Dark, Vi Khi Nao, Morgan Gwenwald, and many others, plus a tribute to Elana Dykewomon!

Wherever I find queer women, I find sex educators. Wherever I find sex educators, I find queer women. We’re Dr. Seussian in our anything-goes sex-ed contexts. We will teach it in a car. We will teach it at the bar.

The work of sex—teaching it, learning it, diving into it, avoiding it, paying for it, being paid for it—is as pedestrian as anything. Even—and here is the point we and all the contributors to Sinister Wisdom 130: We Teach Sex (to Everyone!) make, over and over—when it is not commonly represented. Or, rather, is only represented when it comes to certain demographics....The baseline is this: communities learn by community. This is a fact driven by necessity and survival and scarcity, yes, but also driven by resilience and strength and the hard-won knowledge that comes with having to do it yourself. This is what the work is.

—From “Notes for a Special Issue” by Kristy Lin Billuni and July Westhale

(Sinister Wisdom 130: We Teach Sex (to Everyone!) published Fall 2023.)