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@ShawntaDeshawn
      

Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz has a BS in Queer Women’s Studies from the CUNY Baccalaureate Program, an MFA in Creative Writing/Fiction, and an MLS with a focus on Archiving and Records Management from Queens College.

Her writing is featured in journals and anthologies such as Reference Librarianship & Justice: History, Practice and Praxis , Informed Agitation: Library and Information Skills in Social Justice Movements and Beyond , Sinister Wisdom: A Multicultural Lesbian Literary and Art Journal, and others. She is also a Zinester, disseminating her Zine, Black Lesbians in the 70’s and Before: An at Home Tour at the Lesbian Herstory Archives.  

Current:
Shawn the Dean of Barnard Library. She is the Managing Editor for Sinister Wisdom: A Multicultural Lesbian Literary & Art Journal. She is an adjunct assistant professor at Pratt School of Information. She is co-founder of Fridays in May: Queer BIPOC Peer Networking Program. And she a co-editor for a collection on Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations in Identity and Libraries and Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations in Archives and Practice edited by Litwin Books as part of the Gender & Sexuality Series.

Past:

She was a coordinator at the Lesbian Herstory Archives for nearly 20 years. She served as the Associate Dean for Teaching, Learning, and Engagement at NYU Division of Libraries. She is the 2020 recipient of the WGSS Award for Significant Achievement, sponsored by Duke University Press, administered by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Libraries Association, for her work archiving and exhibiting the Salsa Soul Sisters, the first lesbian of color organization in the country.

She was a Co-Chair for the board of CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies at the Graduate Center, CUNY and chair of the Archives committee.  She is a co-editor of Sinister Wisdom 118, a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal for a special issue that commemorates the 45th anniversary of the Lesbian Herstory Archives. She worked with the women of Salsa Soul Sisters to highlight their LHA Special Collection and pay homage to the lesbians of color who forged an activist organization in the early 1970s.

Before NYU Libraries, Shawn was Head of Reference at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She co-edited issue 103 of Sinister Wisdom, a lesbian literary and art journal on Honoring the Michigan Women’s Music Festival. She served as a Board member of Fire and Ink, a national organization for LGBTQ writers of African Descent. Shawn initiated Alternative Realities: Three Staged Readings by Black Lesbian Writers where she debuted her play, Saturnistas. She was a 2014 Louis Armstrong House and Museum Resident.

With her project, Her Saturn Returns: Queer Women of Color Life Transitions, Shawn collected and archived stories of queer women of color turning thirty. She was co-producer of Rivers of Honey, a performance space for women of color held in the herstoric WOW Cafe Theater for eight years. She co-founded Sister Outsider (2000), an organization for and by self-supporting young women in Brooklyn, NY. She was also a co-founding member of FIERCE! (2001), and the Ya-Ya Network (1999), all youth member led organizations in NYC. Shawn founded Queer Housing Nacional, an online space for queer women of color and allies to support the housing needs of queer women of color. Shawn promoted Lambey Press where she sold her zines.