Ghanaian-American | Queer | Femme | Bibliophile | Neurodivergent 

Isis Asare is the visionary founder of Sistah Scifi, the first Black-owned bookstore focused on science fiction and fantasy in the United States as validated by the American Booksellers Association.  With a background spanning business, technology, and community engagement, she attended Stanford University majoring in Psychology and minoring in African and African-American Studies and holds a MBA and Master's in Public Policy from Columbia Business School and Harvard University respectively.

Her journey has taken her across industries and continents from serving in the Peace Corps in Ghana, where her parents are from, to leading in the tech space at Microsoft, Shutterfly, and Brightroll. She also founded Sistah Sinema a film platform celebrating queer women of color. Sistah Sinema supported crowdfunding campaigns for queer women of color filmmakers, including Cheryl Dunye, by amplifying their projects, mobilizing community support, and helping secure funding to bring their stories to the screen.

A lifelong bibliophile, Isis launched Sistah Scifi after a conversation about Afrofuturist literature sparked a deeper mission to amplify Black and Indigenous speculative fiction authors and build a vibrant literary community. In 2023, Isis Asare expanded Sistah Scifi by opening three Sistah Scifi Book Vending Machines in California and Washington, bringing these stories to even more readers. Isis is the contributing editor of Afrofuturism: Short Stories published by Flametree Press.

Concurrently to serving as the CEO of Sistah Scifi, Isis is the Executive Director of Aunt Lute, a non-profit feminist press dedicated to publishing voices often under-represented in literature. Read more here.

Interviews & Media Features

• Girls That Create: 
  
  

• Take the Doughnut:

  

• The Vault Podcast: 

  

• Facebook Interview:

  

Speaking Engagements