Tessa Karsten is a PhD candidate within the project In Our Own Words: Language, Life Story-Telling, and Empowerment in the United States. Under the supervision of Dr. Eva Daussà, Dr. Katy Hull, and Prof. Dr. Barnita Bagchi, she is researching lesbian literary activism within the Feminist Bookstore Network in the United States during the last quarter of the 20th century. She is the current Co-Editor-in-Chief of FRAME, Journal of Literary Studies. She is a member of the Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies (NOG) and the America in the World Research Group.

She holds a double MA in North American Studies and Literary Studies from Leiden University. As an MA student, she researched the relationship between the women’s health movement and lesbian AIDS activism in New York City and the self-representation and identity in the journals of Anne Lister (1791-1840).