Sylvia Thomas is a poet and artist from Indianapolis, Indiana. For the last ten years, Sylvia has been sharing her poetry and music for the stage through her lens as a Queer, Transgender, and Intersex Hoosier (someone from Indiana, USA). She’s performed her work across the Midwest, the East Coast, Scandinavia, World Pride, EuroGames, the United Nations, the United States Capitol, and the Danish Parliament.

She has three self-published works of poetry titled, DIVINE (2018), Twirl: A Collection of Poetry by a Queer and Transgender Hoosier (2021), and VIGIL (2023).

In 2023, she became an Artist and Public Life Resident with Big Car Collaborative in Garfield Park. During November and December ‘23, she had her first solo visual arts show, Letters to a Haunted House, at the Guichelaar Gallery on the Tube Factory Artspace campus. Her visual work has also featured in the show Uncensored by Region 90, The Archivist, and State Street Presents.

In 2024, Sylvia traversed Indiana, interviewed LGBTQ+ Hoosiers and created her piece, ALL MATERIALS ARE MIRRORS (2024) through the generosity of the Herbert Simon Family Foundation. She also was a contributing editor to the MDW Atlas by the Public Media Institute in Chicago, Illinois.

In 2025, Sylvia will be spending her time creating a new body of work and spending her summer in Berlin as a Creative Renewal Arts Fellow through the Indy Arts Council.

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Outside of her art practice, she has spent the last seven years as an awarded Public Health professional at Step-Up Inc. She developed initiatives to educate providers on the health disparities of the Transgender community. She launched the organization’s Harm Reduction program and the third Safe Syringe Exchange site in all of Marion County

She is a Libra (Sun), Leo (Rising), and a Sagittarius (Moon). Her biggest inspirations for her creative practices are Ocean Vuong, Audre Lorde, Danez Smith, Brit Marling, Ariana Reines. John Brooks, Jenny Holzer, Stephan Tashjihan, Caroline Polachek, T-Pain, Imogen Heap, Frank Ocean, and Hatis Noit