Jewelle Gomez was born in Boston where she graduated from Northeastern University . She received her MS from Columbia University School of Journalism and lived in New York City for 22 years before moving to San Francisco . She was on the original staff of SAY BROTHER, one of the first weekly black television programs in the U.S. (WGBH-TV) and on the founding board of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).

She was formerly the Director of the Literature Program for the New York State Council on the Arts, as well as the Executive Director of the Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives at San Francisco State University from 1996-99. Currently she is the program director for Cultural Equity Grants at the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Her novel, THE GILDA STORIES, is one of only four books to ever win two Lambda Literary Awards in one year (fiction and science fiction). It was recently released in a new, 13 th anniversary edition. Her collection of essays, FORTY-THREE SEPTEMBERS, was also nominated for a Lambda Award. She has three collections of poetry, THE LIPSTICK PAPERS, FLAMINGOES AND BEARS and most recently: ORAL TRADITION. She co-edited, with Eric Garber, an anthology of fantasy fiction, SWORDS OF THE RAINBOW (Alyson Publications 1996). Her newest books are a collection of short fiction, DON'T EXPLAIN (Firebrand Books) and the Quality Paperback Book Club edition of the script for “Bones & Ash,” the play based on her novel.

Her poetry, fiction and cultural criticism have appeared in numerous publications including The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, Gay Community News, The Village Voice, THE NATION, THE ADVOCATE, BRIDGES, BELLE LETTRES, BLACK SCHOLAR, QUARTERLY BLACK REVIEW OF BOOKS, ESSENCE, MS. And in anthologies such as DANGEROUS LIAISONS, DARK MATTER, HOME GIRLS, DOES YOUR MAMA KNOW, SKIN DEEP, DAUGHTERS OF AFRICA, PENGUIN BOOK OF LESBIAN SHORT FICTION, READING BLACK READING FEMINIST, CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT, WOMEN ON WOMEN, and THE OXFORD TREASURY OF LOVE STORIES.

She has delivered lectures at a variety of educational and public institutions around the country including University of California at Los Angeles, Humboldt, Santa Barbara and Davis, UCSF, San Francisco Jewish Community Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vassar, Brown University, Dartmouth, The State University of Ohio, Iowa State University, The Jewish Museum of New York, Howard University, University of Washington (Seattle), University of Arizona (Tucson) and many others.

Her stage adaptation of her novel for Urban Bush Women, “Bones and Ash: A Gilda Story,” toured thirteen U.S. cities in the 1996 season. Since moving to the Bay Area she has taught fiction writing, poetics and popular culture.

She has served on advisory boards for Cornell University 's Human Sexuality Archives, Multi-Cultural Review Magazine, and is currently on the national advisory boards for the National Center for Lesbian Rights and POETS & WRITERS. She also serves on the Mayor's Poet Laureate Committee; the advisory committee for the James C. Hormel Center of the San Francisco Public Library; and is a Commissioner for the San Francisco Library Commission. She was a founding member of the San Francisco philanthropic group, One Hundred Lesbians and our friends.

The recipient of two California Arts Council residencies (1994 &1995), she won a 1997 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry and in 2001 was awarded an individual artist commission from the San Francisco Arts Commission. She is currently finishing her second novel and is collaborating on a play about James Baldwin.

 

Amber Hollibaugh is a Senior Strategist at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Prior to her involvement with the Task Force she serverd as the Director of Education, Advocacy and Community Building for SAGE (Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders). SAGE is the first national organization dedicated to providing services and advocacy for LGBT seniors. For many years, she created innovative National HIV and AIDS programs and was the first director of the Lesbian AIDS Project at Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC). A well-known activist, artist, writer, and community organizer, Ms. Hollibaugh has been working on cutting edge issues of the LGBT liberation movement since its beginnings in 1969. She is author of My Dangerous Desires: a Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home. She also co-produced and directed The Heart of the Matter, a documentary about women's sexuality and HIV risk, which won the 1994 Sundance Festival Freedom of Expression Award and ran on the PBS series, P.O.V. Hollibaugh is on the advisory panel of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, is a board member of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) and is a founding board member of Queers for Economic Justice.

 

Hanne Blank is a writer, editor, public speaker, and educator whose work has appeared to great acclaim in many print and online publications, anthologies and collections, as well as in book form. A classically-trained musician who is also formally educated as an historian, she has been writing full-time since 2000.

Ms. Blank's work “…does for sex what feminism does for women: it gives us context” ( Libido ). The Chicago Sun-Times has called her “…a well-reasoned academic, non-judgmental social scientist, unassailable expert, and passionate flirt," and The Village Voice raves “…the perfect poster girl, clearly confident… a huge helping of stereotype busting, old-fashioned feminist consciousness raising, and self-esteem elevation.”

She is the author/editor of the following books:

• Virgin: The Untouched History (forthcoming, Bloomsbury USA)
• Unruly Appetites (2003, Seal Press)
• Shameless: Women's Intimate Erotica (2002,Seal Press)
• Best Transgender Erotica (with Raven Kaldera, 2002, Circlet Press)
• Zaftig: Well Rounded Erotica (2001, Cleis Press)
• Big Big Love: A Sourcebook on Sex for People of Size and Those Who Love Them (2000, Greenery Press)

Periodicals which have featured her work include Penthouse, Southwest Art, Lilith, Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture , the Baltimore CityPaper , the Boston Phoenix, Peko Peko, PRIDE Magazine, Santa Fean Magazine , and numerous others. Her short fiction and essays are also frequently anthologized.

Ms. Blank and her work have been featured and reviewed in The Village Voice, OUT Magazine, First for Women Magazine, Libido, MODE, and many other periodicals, and she has been widely interviewed on radio and television in the US, UK, and Canada, including being featured on National Public Radio, BBC 4, and on the acclaimed Canadian program SexTV . As a public speaker and educator, Ms. Blank has appeared on the campuses of many universities and colleges, including Johns Hopkins University, Tufts University, SUNY Binghamton, the University of Washington, and the University of Minnesota as well as at national and regional conferences of various types and centers for adult learning.

Ms. Blank is former co-editor of Scarletletters.com and Scarleteen.com , former associate editor of Sojourner: The Women's Forum , and has been a sex columnist for the Boston Phoenix and for Good Vibes Magazine . Prior to becoming a full-time writer, she taught at the university level at institutions including Brandeis University, Tufts University, and Whitworth College. As a musician, she has been a Fellow of the Tanglewood Institute, and was the 1991 recipient of the George Whitfield Chadwick medal for her work as a proponent of contemporary art music.

Although Ms. Blank is a dyed-in-the-wool Midwesterner, she currently lives (through no fault of her own) and works in Baltimore, Maryland, where she shares a purple, hundred-year-old house with her spouse, two cats, and the world's cutest Japanese Akita.