Sometimes we create archives, sometimes we create dialogues: reflections on generational transfer from <i>Sinister Wisdom</i>

Sinister Wisdom , founded amid a blooming of lesbian-feminist print culture in 1976, is the longest-running lesbian-feminist literary and art journal. A thriving US-based nonprofit organisation, the journal publishes four issues each year, including a series of Sapphic Classics that return classic lesbian-feminist texts to print. Presently, a core element of Sinister Wisdom ’s work is generational transfer, ensuring the journal’s continued vitality and imbuing the value of lesbian culture to contemporary formations of lesbians and queer women. Sinister Wisdom engages in this transfer work in multiple ways, from the configuration of the board of directors to the review and selection of work for publication and the formation of editorial groups for issues. This article explores in two voices—the editor and publisher and a Sinister Wisdom board member—the opportunities and challenges of generational transfer and intergenerational collaborations through experiences at Sinister Wisdom . A handful of issues of the journal exemplify intergenerational collaboration, but not all issues do. Some issues are not intergenerational in their process or their product. Both models are successful; intergenerational transfer has many expressions and forms in an organisation like Sinister Wisdom . Organisationally, Sinister Wisdom’s values invite understanding what is possible and valuing what is offered. The article concludes with reflections about the importance of intergenerational transfer.