WMN Lesbian Art and Poetry | About the editorial team

WMN founders and editorial team Sara Duell, Jeanette Spicer, and Florencia Alvarado. Photo by: Jeanette Spicer

About WMN

WMN is a biannual publication featuring underrepresented and marginalized lesbian artists and poets founded by Jeanette Spicer, Florencia Alvarado and Sara Duell. Each issue features work by lesbians who historically do not get much representation within LGBTQIA+ media. This includes lesbians living rurally or outside the American urban metropolitan cities, dykes fifty-five and above, lesbians identifying as disabled and/or are living with a physical, sensory, cognitive, or chronic illness, and lesbians with experience of migration. Our fifth upcoming open call showcases lesbians who are trans, gender non-binary and/or non-conforming.

The publication comes at a time when words like Lesbian and Dyke have been misunderstood as restrictive or excluding. Since our founding in 2019, we have worked to challenge this notion and show how inclusive and rich the terms Lesbian and Dyke are. In addition to the printed publication we have also hosted numerous public programs including lectures with prominent artists such as Lola Flash and Phoenix Lindsey-Hall, readings and other events at LGBTQ venues such as Alice Austen House, Cubby Hole, Ginger’s, Dave’s Lesbian Bar, WOW cafe, Metropolitan Church and BGSQD at the LGBTQ Center.

Though a lot of WMN’s content is featured online, it has been essential to the editorial team that we have a printed publication as the main project. The physicality is key, pointing to the permanence of the project and the work featured. Taking up physical space on our readers’ shelves, and at numerous archives like a body at a protest, is a small but essential act of resistance.

About the co-editors

JEANETTE SPICER is an American artist working in photography and video to raise questions around intimacy, the lesbian gaze, and lack of lesbian representation within the medium in which she works. Spicer has been awarded a number of residencies in the US and Europe, including Vermont Studio Center, The Wassaic Project, and Benaco Arte in Italy, among others. Spicer’s first monograph, “Sea(see)” was published in 2018 by Kris Graves Projects. She has shown work Globally and has appeared in the New Yorker, Dazed Magazine, and Velvet Eyes among other publications. She has worked as the Education Manager at Magnum Photos and currently teaches at The International Center of Photography, and School of Visual Art.

FLORENCIA ALVARADO is a Venezuelan visual artist, photographer and designer based in Ridgewood, Queens. Her work explores expanded photography, feminism, the body, and the deconstruction of traditional techniques through digital art, collage, scanning and everyday journaling through digital images. She has been invited as a speaker in Colombia and Brazil. Her work has been exhibit in Museums such as MAAM (Museum of Modern Art in Medellín, Colombia) Hacienda La Trinidad and Contemporary Museum of Art of Zulia (Venezuela). She has also exhibit her work in group shows in New York, Melbourne, Paris, Buenos Aires and Caracas. She has worked as an Art Director, Editor and Curator for Backroom Caracas, Fundación Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and more.

The image pictures one of the editors of wmn zine (Sara Duell)

SARA DUELL works at the intersection of art and design, researching the possibility of societal transformation through pleasure. Working within a feminist/queer framework, she uses textiles and design to toy with the limiting binaries that inform the status quo to create analytical visual spaces. She has been awarded numerous stipends supporting her artistic practice, most recently from Estrid Ericson foundation, Helge Ax:son Johnson and the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been shown at the Textile Art Center, Splashlight Studios and Spaceworks Gowanus. Sara has a BFA in communication design from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, BC. She teaches in the MFA communication design program at Pratt Institute.

Contact

The best way to contact the WMN editorial team if you have questions or comments is to email wmn.zine@gmail.com. To submit work or pitches to the website features email submit@wmnzine.com. You can also follow us on Instagram and on Facebook.