Special Issue: Ecolesbian Futures
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

This Sinister Wisdom issue aims to explore a new term – ecolesbianism – and what it can offer us in this climate crisis. As guest editors who share resonant but different experiences with ecology and lesbianism, we want to connect with people interested in, identified by, and/or provoked by the ecolesbian concept, while advancing the depth of the ecolesbian conversation as we explore the futures it prompts us to imagine and work towards. In this issue, we are asking: what is “ecolesbianism” and what can its future/s hold?
This call welcomes non-essentialized takes on gender and lesbianism and a diversity of queer identities exploring the concept of ecolesbianism. We welcome submissions of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, interviews, visual art (e.g. illustrations, photographs, collages), and genre-non-specific work, up to 5,000 words. We expect submissions to have an informed understanding of intersectionality across issues (eg, disability and racial justice), and to incorporate such perspectives where possible. For thematic guidance, authors can approach the ecolesbian concept broadly, or take inspiration from these further questions:

What does it take to be an ecolesbian? What is the scope of ecolesbianism, and can it move us beyond gender-essentialized views of lesbianism?
How is climate change affecting lesbian practices and perspectives? Can we be informed by lesbian experiences from areas facing extreme climate change?
How might distinct lesbian niches (e.g. trans lesbians, Black lesbians, butch culture) inform the ecolesbian concept and movement?
Building upon established concepts such as ecofeminism, ecosexuality, and queer ecologies, what new insights can ecolesbianism or lesbian ecologies offer to our activism, relationships, writing, thinking, and being?

INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMISSION

Expected timeline:
Submissions will be due in early 2026.
Issue publication will be in 2027 or early 2028.

Please direct inquiries to the Sinister Wisdom Guest Editorial team at: isabella.b.nunez@gmail.com, yasmin@u.yale-nus.edu.sg, and maxlopez@nus.edu.sg with the subject line “Sinister Wisdom Special Issue – [Title of your piece]”

Submissions will open soon at the Sinister Wisdom Submittable Portal.

Submissions in non-English and/or multiple languages are welcome. The editorial team speaks English, Spanish, and Cantonese, and will work to understand submissions in other languages. Translations are welcome but not required.
Written submissions files should be in a clearly legible font type and size. These may be changed by the editorial team should the contribution be included in the final journal issue.
Written submissions should be in an editable WORD file format. Submission in other types of file should be accompanied by a strong reason for it, and cooperation for re-formatting may be required if the submission is incompatible with tools used to edit the issue.
Visual art submissions should be submitted in the highest quality possible, in a widely downloadable format, e.g. PNG, JPEG, PDF.
Written submissions have a 5,000 words limit.
Submissions of previously published work will not be accepted.
Contributors should indicate if they are comfortable with any part of their submission being re-formatted into a creative product (e.g. magazine, poster, etc.). The issue will primarily be published in a standard text and image format, and editors will explore further presentation formats once all submissions are finalized.

FURTHER INTRODUCTION TO ECOLESBIANISM:
Why are we putting together this issue, and why now?

Remaining hopeful amidst the state of global affairs necessitates work. Between climate change and a global swing towards an androcentric, (cis)heteronormative and techno-fascist far-right, the future of our intimacies seems far from guaranteed. The libertarian identity politics that promised freedom once upon a time now feel like a distracting façade, breaking our issues into digestible bites without apparent connections between one or the other. The time for solidarity is long overdue – both across queer groups and across species. We cannot risk the mistake of understanding our mutual struggle as a human issue exclusively. The taxonomization of life into species is a colonial impulse which has produced hierarchical boundaries between the human and the ‘sub-human’ that have hurt us collectively. The same logic governs the ideology of transphobia for example, imposing a prescriptive taxonomy of gender onto human life. Our queer ontologies, and more specifically our lesbian ontologies, will not find a breakthrough for as long as we remain operating as humans for humans, neglecting our other-than-human kin with whom political, personal, and communal horizons are yet to be built. As ecolesbians, we want to see what could happen if we apply the unique passion, voracity, and thrill of lesbian love to our relationship with the Earth.
This Sinister Wisdom issue emerges from a Singapore-published zine “The Anthropussy: an ecolesbian manifesto” (2024) which introduced ecolesbianism as an extension of our lesbian principles and gender-marginalised intimacy onto our relationships with the environment and more-than-human kin. The idea of the ‘Anthropussy’, playing with the scholarly term ‘Anthropocene’, alludes to the erotic and utopian potential we carry within this era of unprecedented anthropogenic climate change. It combines an environmentalist recognition of the climate crisis with a feminist and queer theory analysis of the vulva as a symbol for vast potential, pleasure, intimacy, and expansiveness that a lesbian experience of interspecies relationships might involve, while seeing kinship with the non-human as a way to transgender (verb) the cisgender body.
We are also particularly interested in futures, or futurity, in this issue. For the queer body, the concept of ‘the future’ is laden with uncertainty – we are not guaranteed the political rights, health care, and social acceptance that we need, but still we move forward. Our climate future is of course marked with uncertainty as well. What places are becoming uninhabitable, and for whom? What will become of what we call ‘nature’? And where can we find what Anna Tsing (2015) calls a “third nature”: that which lives despite capitalism? We hope this issue will call back to connections made in Sinister Wisdom 77 “Environmental Issues/Lesbian Concerns”, with an updated political landscape and concern for futurity. We are inspired by scholars like Donna Haraway, Gloria Anzaldúa, José Esteban Muñoz, and Kim Tallbear, and by our own queer communities, persisting on this uncertain earth and living despite capitalism. And we want to be inspired by more – by you! We want to collect stories, perspectives, visions, and all sorts of explorations of our Ecolesbian Futures.

GUEST EDITORIAL TEAM

Isabella Blea Nuñez (they/she)
Colorado, USA
isabella.b.nunez@gmail.com

Yasmin Binte Mohd Sani (they/he)
Singapore
yasmin@u.yale-nus.edu.sg

Max D. López Toledano (they/she)
Singapore
maxlopez@nus.edu.sg