Community Experiences

Abena Wirekoh is a class of 2020 Girls Write Now mentee based in New York, NY.

Allison is an editor, writer, and reporter based in Brooklyn. She is currently a Digital Editor at MasterClass. Prior, she was a Senior Editor at American Theatre magazine. Her writing has appeared in Brides, Backstage, Epicurious, Hello Giggles, and TDF Stages. She’s a proud mentor for the Girls Write Now organization.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all sentient beings. Her work in this lifetime is to facilitate infinite, unstoppable ancestral love in practice. Her poetic work in response to the needs of her cherished communities has held space for multitudes in mourning and movement. Alexis’s co-edited volume Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (PM Press, 2016) has shifted the conversation on mothering, parenting and queer transformation. Alexis has transformed the scope of intellectual, creative and oracular writing with her triptych of experimental works published by Duke University Press (Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity in 2016, M Archive: After the End of the World in 2018 and Dub: Finding Ceremony, 2020.) Unlike most academic texts, Alexis’s work has inspired artists across form to create dance works, installation work, paintings, processionals, divination practices, operas, quilts and more.  Alexis is the founder of Brilliance Remastered, an online network and series of retreats and online intensives serving community accountable intellectuals and artists in the legacies of Audre Lorde’s profound statement in “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” that the preceding statement is “only threatening to those…who still think of the master’s house as their only source of support.” Through retreats on ancestor accountable intellectual practice, and online courses on topics from anger as a resource to transnational intellectual solidarity Alexis and her Brilliance Remastered collaborators have nurtured a community of thinkers and artists grounded in the resources that normative institutions ignore.  

Annaya Baynes (she/they) is a Community Coordinator. They graduated from Spelman College with a Bachelor of Arts in English and French. As an undergraduate, she worked on Spelman’s social justice podcast, The Blue Record, and the reproductive justice-oriented podcast Black Feminist Rants. Annaya has interned at various publishing houses, including Penguin Random House, Macmillan, and The Feminist Press. They have a deep love for literature and film. She is a Master’s student at NYU’s Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies.

Annaya Baynes is a class of 2023 mentee alum. They are a graduating senior English and French double major at Spelman College. Beyond loving to write about how queer and trans Black people experience love and joy, she spends the weekend as a Dungeon Master for their Dungeons and Dragons club. They work on a social justice podcast, The Blue Record, and a reproductive justice podcast, Black Feminist Rants. Annaya also enjoys acting and baking in her free time. They are also a fan of all things that go bump in the night.