Alexis Pauline Gumbs is cherished by a wide range of communities as an oracle and a vessel of love. Drawing on over 25 years of experience as a writer and facilitator, her inclusive practice finds us and brings us into the ceremonies we have always needed. Her books include: Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals (AK Press 2020), Dub: Finding Ceremony (Duke Press, 2020), M Archive: After the End of the World (Duke Press 2018), Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity (Duke Press, 2016) and Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (PM Press, 2016). Alexis was honored to be the dramaturg for the world premiere of Sharon Bridgforth's Dat Black Mermaid Man Lady, directed by Ebony Noelle Golden in 2018 and for the world premiere of Bull Jean and Dem/dey back, directed by Daniel Alexander Jones in 2023.

In 2023 Alexis won the Windham-Campbell Prize in Poetry. In 2022 she was honored with a Whiting Award in non-fiction and was lauded for creating "modern fables that offer new methods of feeling," and was also a 2022 National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellow. In 2020-2021 Alexis was awarded a National Humanities Center Fellowship. Alexis and her partner Sangodare have received many honors, including an Advocate 40 under 40 feature for their decade of work to create an intergenerational living library of Black LGBTQ brilliance called Mobile Homecoming. Alexis lives in Durham, North Carolina where she nurtures and is nurtured by a visionary creative community while scheming towards her dream of being your favorite cousin. Her new biography Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde arrives from Farrar, Strauss and Giroux on August 20th of this year!