The sheer exuberance of language that pours forth in Dael Orlandersmith's plays has dazzled critics and audiences alike. In these three pieces, the award-winning writer and performer celebrates the power of words to rescue the young black women she portrays from their constricted worlds. In the Obie Award-winning play "Beauty's Daughter," Diane yearns to free herself from her soul-deadening surroundings, where people drown their unfulfilled aspirations in drugs and alcohol. In "Monster," Theresa imagines a life in the rock-'n'-roll poetry bohemia of Manhattan's Lower East Side and away from her home in East Harlem, where she is scorned as a misfit. And in "The Gimmick," Alexis escapes her brutal reality among the library bookshelves, where she dreams of becoming a writer in Paris. Charged with fearless wisdom, these three electrifying plays transform rage-filled ghetto experience into a triumph of rhapsodic expression.

And God Said, Let There Be Dykes is a thunderclap of queer resilience—part scripture, part love letter, part battle cry. In this bold collection, the sacred and the sapphic intertwine as Black queer poet Essie reimagines divinity through the lens of dykes, studs, femmes, and gender-expansive holiness. Each poem is a reclamation—a gospel of flesh, freedom, softness, and survival. From kitchen tables to church pews, from the first heartbreak to the first hallelujah in a lover’s arms, these verses carry the reader through the grief and glory of queer becoming. With lyrical fire and unapologetic tenderness, this book What if God is not watching us, but walking with us donning a pride flag? What if we are the creation and the creator all at once? This is not just a book of poems—it’s a sanctuary. Come as you are. There’s holy water in the sweat, in the tears, in the kiss.And God said, Let There Be Dykes—and it was good.

"...a dialogue between two women...as friends, poets, lesbians and lovers." Suniti was born in Bombay in 1941, and Gillian was born in Melbourne in 1945.

"...a dialogue between two women...as friends, poets, lesbians and lovers." Suniti was born in Bombay in 1941, and Gillian was born in Melbourne in 1945.