Sinister Wisdom

What does lesbian and queer recovery from addiction look like today? In 1983, when sober lesbian Jean Swallow could not find resources about lesbians in recovery, she set out to create them herself. She wrote in the Introduction of her groundbreaking collection Out From Under: Sober Dykes and Our Friends (Spinster’s Ink): “It is a record of our journeys, our fights, our joy. It is a road-map and a vision, a sharing and a song.” Out From Under remains the only collection of essays about lesbians in recovery. 

Now, forty years later, and in the spirit of Jean Swallow, I come to you, mid-life and sober myself, looking for our road-map again. I stand, gratefully, between two generations; looking up to my lesbian elders with my arms wide open to our younger, brighter future. 

There are more opportunities to connect in recovery now than forty years ago. But nevertheless, 

our legacy started in a bar. We found each other in a bar. So how do we find each other when that space is no longer safe? What obstacles to get sober did you face as a lesbian or queer person, as a person of color, as a trans person? What does queer and sober community look like to you?

I seek your stories: your journeys, your fights, your joys. 

How did you find your way home? 

Please submit fiction, nonfiction, poetry, interviews, and genre-non-specific work, up to 5,000 words, and a short contributor biography between twenty-five and 125 words. I am also seeking illustration and photographs (.jpg or .tif files only, print resolution size at least 300 ppi). Please do not send previously published work.

Deadline for submissions: TBA
Any questions can be sent to sinisterwisdom@gmail.com

About the Editor: Max Backer is a queer writer from Ithaca, New York. They taught English and gender studies at St. John Fisher College for ten years before making the leap into community building for folks in recovery. As a spoken word poet, Max has toured all over North America and opened for Andrea Gibson and Rachel McKibbens. They were a 2012 Lambda Fellow in Poetry under Jewelle Gomez and Dorothy Allison. In 2018, they delivered a TedxTalk entitled: no one has imagined us: the gender non-binary experience. Max created the Jean Swallow Project, a multimedia experience of sober lesbian history, in 2021.

Gender nonconformity has long, thick, roots in Lesbianism, but the coexistence of being other gendered and Lesbianism is as varied in its narrative as what is meant by “gender diverse,” “nonbinary,” and/or “other gendered.” The controversy surrounding French Lesbian philosopher Monique Wittig’s statement, “Lesbians are not women,” provides a snapshot into this tension. This conclusion stemmed from her broader argument that woman is a social and political class defined by the patriarchal heterosexual contract; that man and woman are categories of dominance. Conceptualizing Lesbianism as resistance to the patriarchy-as freedom to be and love whoever despite the existing man-made binaries of humanity’s social roles, places Lesbians outside of “man” and “woman.”

Wittig rejects the reclamation of woman as playing into the system of oppression and ultimately upholding it. Though not an argument for other genders and radical in its rhetoric, her argument may be appropriated to tell a more gender inclusive story of Lesbianism. Us nonbinary, gender diverse, and genderqueer Lesbians are doing exactly what our cisters are doing: conceptualizing, existing, and loving outside of what is structured to have power over us. Yet, our lives are not just theoretical, philosophical, or political arguments. We are not just bodies that you impress and practice your ideologies on.

This issue aims to hold space for Lesbians who explicitly fall in between (all over and simultaneously at) trans identities conceptualized as places on opposite ends: trans men and trans women. This issue seeks to honor and affirm Lesbians outside of the sex/gender binary in all forms that it may take and to include nonconcrete gender identities found in all cultural specifics. 

Action, place, and physicality. The discourse around gender has been so simultaneously concrete and abstractly individualistic. What does it mean to be trans, but to not transition? Why is transness qualified by action? What if the change were only social, and not medical? What happens when consider nonbinary as a subculture? How may we appropriate the language and theology of our Lesbian/Queer ancestors to foster a more gender diverse Lesbian world? 

We seek essays, short fiction, poetry, oral histories, and visual arts that tackle these questions and more. Of utmost importance is a representation of gender diverse Lesbian lives in all forms. Please submit once through Submittable; submissions should be in one document (up to 10 pages). Include a brief bio (four to five sentences) in the body of the email, along with any social media links.

Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural lesbian literary & art journal that publishes four issues each year. Publishing since 1976, Sinister Wisdom works to create a multicultural, multi-class Lesbian space. Sinister Wisdom seeks to open, consider and advance the exploration of Lesbian community issues. Sinister Wisdom recognizes the power of language to reflect our diverse experiences and to enhance our ability to develop critical judgment as Lesbians evaluating our community and our world.

Contributors will receive a one-year subscription to Sinister Wisdom and a copy of the issue.
 

Deadline for submissions: January 31, 2024
 Any questions can be sent to sinisterwisdom@gmail.com

About the Editor: Sierra Earle is a nonbinary Lesbian project coordinator from Cedar Rapids, Iowa where they are always seeking community. In 2022, they were awarded the Sister Mary Xavier Creative Writing Award from Mount Mercy University, won first place in the annual Lyrical Iowa competition in 2021, and regularly participate in various local readings. They also served as an Editorial Assistant for Sinister Wisdom overseeing various projects including the 2023 calendar and marketing for Sinister Wisdom issues. Outside of work, they are a lover of jazz, birds, and nonconformers.

What is Madness, and how do we, as lesbian / queer creatives, wield it? Amid much feminist discourse around the figure of the “madwoman,” mostly as an archetype to be avoided or, in some instances, appropriated, in reaction to rational distress under violently cisheteropatriarchal conditions, comparatively little discussion has focused on the lived experience of psychiatric survivorship, iatrogenic harm, and abuse under the sign of “mental illness” or psychiatric disability. Behind and beyond the figure of the madwoman, or the specter of “hysteria,” are the lived (sur)realities of Madpeople of all marginalized genders. 

This issue of Sinister Wisdom seeks contributions by lesbian, queer, and/or trans people self-identified as Mad, mentally disabled, and/or psychiatric survivors. Following the portmanteaued coinages “transMad” (Cavar), “neuroqueer” (Walker, Yergeau, and Michaels-Dillon), and “neurotrans” (Smilges), Madness and (gender)queerness are deeply entangled and often inextricable from each other, both as they manifest “inside” us and in our ways of relating to our words, world(s), lovers, and friends. 

What, who, and where are Mad dykes, and how do we find each other in a world increasingly oriented toward cisheteronormative, whitewashed wellness? What are the legacies and ongoing violences of queer/trans pathologization in our communities and beyond? How do we live as transMad people amid cissexist, saneist attacks from the reactionary Right? And how do we share, negotiate, or conceal our experiences of trauma, altered realities, and unfamiliar access needs while also building community?

Please submit works of any, all, or no genres, including reviews and interviews, up to 5,000 words, and a short contributor biography between 25 and 125 words. I am also seeking illustration and photographs (.jpg or .tif files only, print resolution size at least 300 ppi). Please do not send previously published work.

Deadline for submissions: June 30, 2024
Any questions can be sent to sinisterwisdom@gmail.com

About the Editor: [sarah] Cavar is a PhD candidate and transMad writer-about-town. Their debut novel, Failure to Comply, is forthcoming with featherproof books (2024). Cavar is editor-in-chief of manywor(l)ds.place and associate editor at Frontier Poetry, and has had work published in CRAFT Literary, Split Lip Magazine, Electric Lit, and elsewhere. More at www.cavar.club, @cavar on BlueSky, and @cavarsarah on twitter.