Jewelle Gomez is a writer and activist and the author of the double Lambda Award-winning novel, The Gilda Stories (1991). Her adaptation of the book for the stage Bones & Ash: A Gilda Story, was performed by the Urban Bush Women Theater Company in thirteen US cities. The script was published as a Triangle Classic by the Paperback Book Club. Her other publications include The Lipstick Papers, Flamingoes and Bears, and Oral Tradition. She edited (with Eric Garber) a fantasy fiction anthology entitled Swords of the Rainbow and selected the fiction for The Best Lesbian Erotica of 1997 (Cleis). She is also the author a book of personal and political essays entitled Forty-Three Septembers and a collection of short fiction, Don't Explain. Formerly the executive director of the Poetry Center and the American Poetry Archives at San Francisco State University she has also worked in philanthropy for many years. She is the former director of the Literature program at the New York State Council on the Arts and the director of Grants and Community Initiatives for Horizon and the President of the San Francisco Library Commission. She lives in San Francisco.