Saint Trey W.

When America Meets Its Own Violence Writer’s Note:

New Post:

sainttreyw.substack.com/p/when-ameri...

I’m so excited to finally announce! Next month, I’ll be heading to LA for the GLAAD 2025 Black Queer Creative Summit! A space for Black queer artists and changemakers to connect, create, and celebrate our brilliance.

From Mutual Aid to Hood Utopias: A Testimony on Black Communal Care By Saint Trey Wooden Before I ever learned the word mutual aid, I knew what it meant to be fed by grief that did not ask for language.  After my mother died, the world did not stop, but the bl…

Just had the honor of contributing to Iansá Magazine — my latest piece dropped yesterday. Tap in and give it a read.

iansamag.com/2025/08/04/f...

💜 thank you for sharing.

For June, On Her Birthday A Love Note in the Black Radical Tradition

Happy Birthday, June

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Oh, absolutely, Hakeem Jeffries did his job last night. Gold star. Clap it up for the bare minimum.

Also, just for context (and clarity): Hakeem Jeffries is impressively bad at his job. Like, if mediocrity were a sport, he’d be in the Hall of Fame.

🗳️

We Don't Need Obama Right Now Beyond Yes We Can

We don’t need the return of Obama, we need the rise of something far more radical, tender, and true. This essay is not an attack —it’s an offering, a reckoning, and a refusal to mistake proximity for freedom.

sainttreyw.substack.com/p/we-dont-ne...

Saint Trey W. on Substack Questions that I have been meditating on lately especially as we walk through Pride Month: What if survival isn’t enough? What if we deserve to live with softness, with rest, with joy unpoliced? Who...

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California representatives did a check in where migrants were being detained. They found no beds, no food and no water. Children were among the detained.

Before The Bricks A Pride Month Note

New essay: Before the Bricks Before Stonewall, there was Swann. Before the parade, the prayer. This is for the Black queer ghosts who built the floorboards of Pride. We remember. We reclaim. We return.

sainttreyw.substack.com/p/before-the...

Solace Solnova on Substack AAVE is my mother tongue and I love it. But what I REALLY love is black telepathy. I just had a whole conversation with a sista ion even know without uttering one word. I know we joke about it because...

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We Who Refuse the Silence We are not safe—but we can still be sacred.

a new letter on my Substack. about grace after harm, breathing through empire, and staying human when the world forgets how.

this one’s for anyone who still believes in regard—not as performance, but as practice.

sainttreyw.substack.com/p/we-who-ref...

This week has been a creative explosion for me, one of those rare stretches where everything just clicks and flows. Yes, and AMEN!

I want to be remarkable.

For Brother Malcolm On Your 100th Birthday

Malcolm didn’t ask to be adored. He asked to be understood.
I was a teenager when I read The Autobiography. That book planted the seeds—Blackness, faith, resistance, craft.
Malcolm X remains one of the sharpest minds of the last century. And he still walks with us.

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And, yes that’s a kind of praise, and yes that’s a kind of prayer, and yes I am still here to say Amen or something like that…

Right now, I am grateful for life, not the abstract kind, but the kind that lets you feel a Brooklyn breeze on the back of your neck and ache for someone who’s still here. Grateful for the fact that living is not the same as being alive, but some days, they meet in the middle & call it enough.

And, then again, from a friend whose voice cracked mid-sentence, grief thick in the air like smoke refusing to leave the room. I think gratitude is just another name for survival. For the way we hold onto the thread of breath even when our hands are shaking.

Ocean said, “the hardest thing to do in the world is to live only once.” And, today, living kept knocking. Soft, then loud. First at 7:04am, when I woke too late but still, woke. Then again, in the breath between two pages of a new book, the kind that doesn't just read you, but names you.

The Morning After Her Name It’s early.

For anyone aching quietly today: I wrote about mourning a mother, remembering love, and surviving the silence that follows. This letter is for the ones who know the shape of grief.

Link below:
sainttreyw.substack.com/p/the-mornin...

My people are the people who know and believe what Rodney Hinton, Jr. did was absolutely the right thing. There aren’t any blurred lines here

been watching the system rot in real time. this poem is a refusal, a prophecy, & a reminder: we were never meant to just survive. 🖤

For the full poem, follow me on Instagram at: @sainttreyw

What happens when resistance gets polished? When rage becomes marketable?

My latest piece wrestles with how revolt is repackaged, and what it costs us.

Read it: sainttreyw.substack.com

😮‍💨

🖤

In the 90s, Toni Morrison found out that one of her books had been banned in a men’s prison because they were afraid it would incite a riot. And she was absolutely delighted. In an interview she smiled and said “how powerful is that?” I want to write books that incite riots and tear down prisons.

This!

THIS MOVIE FUCKING LIT!!!!!!