LIT Fridays with Dr. Stephanie Allen

Lit Fridays is a literary-focused, virtual salon presented by the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, featuring conversations and guest performances on the last Friday* of each month at 6:00p EST via Facebook Live and Zoom Webinar. All conversations are moderated by AWAACC Literary Curator, Jessica Lanay.

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 “We Must Document Ourselves Now:” Black Lesbian Cultural Legacies and the Politics of Self-Representation, 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 The Black Femme Collective, 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.