Getting Queer Words into the World

Lauren Hough (she/her)

Lauren Hough is the New York Times bestselling author of Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing. She was born in Germany and raised in seven countries and West Texas. She’s been an airman in the U.S. Air Force, a green-aproned barista, a bartender, a delivery driver, and, for a time, a cable guy. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, The Guardian, and HuffPost. She lives in Austin.

Stephanie Andrea Allen (she/her)

Stephanie Andrea Allen, Ph.D. is an interdisciplinary humanities scholar, creative writer, small press publisher, and Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at Indiana University. Her research centers Black lesbian cultural histories and Black feminisms through various expressions, including literature, film, and other print and visual media. Her current book project examines how Black lesbian literature and film reflects the material realities of Black lesbian lived experiences, as well as how it responds to and resists the heteropatriarchal systems that contribute to the invisibility of Black lesbians in popular and literary culture. Dr. Allen is also Publisher and Editor-in-Chief at BLF Press, and co-editor of Serendipity Literary Magazine. Her creative work can be found in various online and print publications, including Mom Egg Review, Star*Line, Inkwell Black, Big Echo: Critical Science Fiction Magazine, Sinister Wisdom, and in her two short story collections, A Failure to Communicate and How to Dispatch a Human: Stories and Suggestions.

Douglas Ray (he/him)

Douglas Ray earned his B.A. in Classics and English and M.F.A. in creative writing from The University of Mississippi. He was a Klingenstein Fellow at Teachers College, Columbia University, and studied in the doctor of education program at Northeastern University. He is author of a collection of poems, He Will Laugh (Lethe 2012), and editor of The Queer South: LGBTQ Writers on the American South (Sibling Rivalry Press 2014), which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and named Top 10 LGBTQ Book by the American Libary Association. A 2020 Ohio Arts Council Individual Arts Grant recipient, he has received fellowships from the Lambda Literary Foundation, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and Oxford American. Since moving from Oxford in 2010, he has worked in independent boarding schools in Alabama and Ohio and served as a consultant to schools and families in the U.S., UK, Canada, and China. Currently, he is Principal of Yungu High School, an innovative private school founded and funded by Jack Ma and Alibaba Partners. He lives in Hangzhou, China.

Julie Enzer (she/her)

Julie R. Enszer, PhD, is the author of four poetry collections, including Avowed, and the editor of OutWrite: The Speeches that Shaped LGBTQ Literary Culture, Fire-Rimmed Eden: Selected Poems by Lynn Lonidier, The Complete Works of Pat Parker, and Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker 1974-1989. Enszer edits and publishes Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal. You can read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.