Emji Saint Spero is a trans queer writer and

performance artist Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

living in

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

. Their practice occupies a hybrid space between poetry and prose. They are a member of curbAlert, a performance duo with J Shelley Harrison, since 2018. They co-founded the

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...

-based Timeless, Infinite Light with Joel Gregory. In 2014, Timeless, Infinite Light was a founding collective of

Omni Commons The Omni Commons is a group of nine collectives in San Francisco's San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Area devoted to Do it yourself, DIY and community education. It traces its inception to the Occupy movement, specifically Occupy Oakland, and was founded ...

, a collectively-run community space in Oakland, along with the Bay Area Public School, and Sudo Room Sudo Room. Saint Spero is the author of ''disgust'' ( Nomadic Press, 2021) and ''almost any shit will do'' (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2014), and they co-founded the Oakland-based small press and queer poetry cult Timeless, Infinite Light with Joel Gregory. With Lauren Levin, they were editor of ''We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of

Lou Sullivan Louis Graydon Sullivan (June 16, 1951 – March 2, 1991) was an American author and activist known for his work on behalf of trans men. He was perhaps the first transgender man to publicly identify as gay,Highleyman, Liz"Who was Lou Sullivan?" ...

'' (2019), which was awarded the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction.

Career

Spero authored two books of

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

, ''disgust'', published by Nomadic Press in 2021, and ''almost any shit will do'', published by Timeless, Infinite Light in March 2014. They co-founded Timeless, Infinite Light, a queer performance art and poetry

collective A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an ...

and Omni Commons, a collectively-run community space in Oakland.

Books

*''disgust'' (Nomadic Press, 2021) *''We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

'' (Timeless, Infinite Light and Nightboat Books, 2019) As Developmental Editor at Timeless, Infinite Light, Saint Spero worked with eds. Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma, as well as The GLBT Historical Society Archives, to publish the diaries of

, arguably the first gay trans man to medically transition. When Timeless, Infinite Light disbanded in 2019, the collective gave the fully edited and designed book to

Nightboat Books Nightboat Books is an American nonprofit literary press founded in 2004 and located in Brooklyn, New York. The press publishes poetry, fiction, essays, translations, and intergenre books. History The press was founded in 2004 by Kazim Ali and ...

for publication. Introduction by

Susan Stryker Susan O'Neal Stryker (born 1961) is an American professor, historian, author, filmmaker, and theorist whose work focuses on gender and human sexuality. She is a professor of Gender and Women's Studies, former director of the Institute for LGBT Stu ...

. *''almost any shit will do'' (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2014) ''almost any shit will do'' is a work of conceptual poetry. This book was published as both a paperback trade edition and a hand-bound, gatefold

artist book Artists' books (or book arts or book objects) are works of art that utilize the form of the book. They are often published in small editions, though they are sometimes produced as one-of-a-kind objects. Overview Artists' books have employed a ...

Notes

References

External links

* American performance artists American poets Queer artists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{US-poet-stub