GO Proudly Presents: 100 Women We Love, Class Of 2020

Stephanie Andrea Allen

Photo by Jen Berry.

Writer and academic Stephanie Andrea Allen is an interdisciplinary studies scholar with a focus on representations of race, gender, sexuality, and culture in America. A Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at IU-Bloomington, she’s currently working on “‘Marginal and Forbidden:’ Black Lesbians, Contemporary American Culture, and the Politics of Representation,” a look at how Black lesbian literature and film responds to heteropatriarchal systems that contribute to their invisibility in popular and literary culture. Allen is also the founder of a number of organizations, including BLF Press, a small, independent, Black feminist publishing house where she serves as the publisher and editor-in-chief, and The Black Lesbian Literary Collective, a not-for-profit collaborative focused on creating a nurturing and sustainable environment for Black lesbian and queer women of color writers. “As a publisher, I’ve had the honor of working with several extremely talented Black lesbian and queer women of color writers,” Allen tells GO. “Black LGBTQ folx are often told that our work is ‘too Black or too queer,’ and I started BLF Press to ensure that our stories were centered, not marginalized or erased. One of the reviewers of our latest collection mentioned that it was the ‘embodiment of creating your own table.’ I’m extremely proud of that.” Aside from her own publications, Allen’s writing can be seen in numerous other outlets, such as Black From the Future: A Collection of Black Speculative Writing and Lez Talk: A Collection of Black Lesbian Short Fiction, as well as “A Failure to Communicate,” her debut creative writing collection. —IL


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