alexis pauline gumbs created the June Jordan Saturday Survival School and the Juneteenth Freedom Academy in Durham, North Carolina, where she co-creates a living library of Black LGBTQ Feminist Brilliance called the Mobile Homecoming Trust with her partner Sangodare. gumbs won the Whiting Award in Nonfiction for Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals (AK Press, 2020), and is a National Humanities Center Fellow, a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, and author of Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2024)