Samiya Bashir

Samiya Bashir is communications director of Freedom to Marry. Prior to joining Freedom to Marry, Bashir was Communications Director for The Balm In Gilead, Inc., an international HIV/AIDS organization, and ran her own communications and editorial consulting firm serving nonprofit clients. Bashir is a member of the board of the National Black Justice Coalition and is a founding organizer and board member of Fire & Ink: A Writers Festival for GLBT People of African Descent. A former editor at print and online publications including Ms. Magazine, Black Issues Book Review, Curve, NiaOnline.com and others, her poetry, stories, articles, and essays have been featured in numerous publications. Her work has been reprinted internationally and she has read her poetry to audiences across the United States and in Europe. In 2002, Bashir was awarded the Lesbian Poetry Award from the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. Bashir is the author of Where the Apple Falls: Poems (finalist for the Lambda Literary Award), editor of Best Black Women’s Erotica 2, and co-editor of Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art.