Emji Spero

Emji Saint Spero (born April 12, 1986) is a trans queer writer and performance artist living in Los Angeles.They are curious about the potential of creative intimacies to queer the familiar, mapping the boundaries of collective engagement through movement, documentation, personal ephemera, and collaborative performance.

Saint Spero is the author of disgust and almost any shit will do, and they co-founded the Oakland-based small press and queer poetry cult Timeless, Infinite Light with Joel Gregory.

In 2013, Saint Spero co-founded the Oakland-based Timeless, Infinite Light with Joel Gregory.

Timeless, Infinite Light was a founding collective of Omni Commons, a collectively-run community space in Oakland, along with the Bay Area Public School, and Sudo Room Sudo Room.

They were a member of curbAlert, a performance duo with J Shelley Harrison, from 2018-2021.

disgust is an epic, fragmented poem born of a week-long performance, a series of escalating constraints that send Emji Saint Spero spiraling into a frenzy and ultimately, a manic break.

In this hesitant and hyper-confessional excavation of the quotidian, Saint Spero constructs a manual for maneuvering as a body under duress.

As Developmental Editor at Timeless, Infinite Light, Saint Spero worked with eds.

Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma, as well as The GLBT Historical Society Archives, to publish the diaries of Lou Sullivan, arguably the first gay trans man to medically transition.

With Lauren Levin, they were editor of We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan (2019), which was awarded the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction.

When Timeless, Infinite Light disbanded in 2019, the collective offered the book to Nightboat Books for publication.

Introduction by Susan Stryker.

almost any shit will do is a work of conceptual poetry, pulling language from mycelium studies to investigate the underground of political unrest.

Published as both a paperback trade edition and a hand-bound, gatefold artist book.

With Lauren Levin, were co-developmental editor for We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan (edited by Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma), which was awarded the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction.

Saint Spero is the author of disgust (Nomadic Press, 2021) and almost any shit will do (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2014), and they co-founded the Oakland-based small press and queer poetry cult Timeless, Infinite Light with Joel Gregory.