To reach out, you can find Carmen on X, Instagram, or via email.

A Black Puerto Rican feminist writer with a PhD in American Studies from New York University, Carmen Phillips specializes in writing about Blackness, race, queerness, politics, culture, and the many ways we find community and connection with each other. 

Carmen Phillips is the former editor in chief of Autostraddle (2021-2024), a cultural touchstone and the internet’s most popular digital publication for LGBTQ+ women, nonbinary people, and trans people of all genders. She began at Autostraddle in 2017 as a freelance team writer and worked her way up through the company. During her time at Autostraddle, Carmen focused on pop culture, TV and film reviews, criticism, interviews, and news analysis. You can read a highlighted selection of her past writing and work.

As an educator, Carmen has designed and taught curriculums about Black pop culture, Afro-Latine studies, Black and Latine political history, and film criticism at New York University and Lehigh University. Her past speaking engagements include NewFest: The New York LGBT Film Festival, the University of Minnesota, the University of California, Riverside, along with numerous others. Carmen collaborated as a researcher, content consultant, and interview subject with Netflix’s Con Todo to create Visions of Us, a four-part digital documentary on LGBTQ+ Latine representation in TV and film that won the Anthem Award for social impact in digital storytelling.

Her writing and speaking are known for their voice, warmth, thoughtfulness, and humor, often becoming endeared to both readers and often the original creators of the content Carmen’s interacting with.

Carmen claims many past homes, but left the largest parts of her heart in Detroit, Brooklyn, and Buffalo, NY. There were several years in her early 20s when she earnestly slept with a copy of James Baldwin’s “Fire Next Time” under her pillow. And she’d love to work with you!