Mikelle Street Author

Qween Jean is a New York–based activist and costume designer who has designed over fifty shows. She earned a BA in business communications at the University of North Carolina and an MFA in design from New York University Tisch School of the Arts. In 2020, Jean founded Black Trans Liberation, an organization aiming to provide access and employment resources for trans and gender nonconforming communities. In 2021, she was artist-in-residence at MoMA PS1, New York, where she also cocurated Memoriam and Deliverance, an installation that called awareness to the last five years of transphobic fatal violence while celebrating Black trans leaders. Joela Rivera is an Afro-Caribbean, Transgender Abolitionist and organizer based in New York. Mikelle Street is a New York–based editor and storyteller. He is the former editorial director of digital for Out, the Advocate, and Plus magazines, as well as creator and host of HBO Max’s The Let Out: A Legendary Podcast. Street also previously held positions as digital director and senior editor at Out Magazine and style editor at Maxim. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, GQ, Vogue, i-D, and Aperture, among others. Raquel Willis is an activist, award-winning writer, and media strategist dedicated to Black trans liberation. She has held groundbreaking posts throughout her career including director of communications for Ms. Foundation for Women, executive editor of Out Magazine, and national organizer for Transgender Law Center. During her time at Out, she published the GLAAD Media Award–winning Trans Obituaries Project. She has written for Autostraddle, Bitch, Buzzfeed, Essence, For Harriet, HuffPost, PRIDE, Quartz, and VICE. She will release her debut memoir about her coming of identity and activism with St. Martin’s Press in 2023.