Beverly Guy-Sheftall has published a number of texts within African American and Women’s Studies, which have been noted as seminal works by other scholars.
The first anthology on Black women’s literature, Sturdy Black Bridges:Visions of Black Women in Literature (Doubleday, 1980), which she coedited with Roseann P. Bell and Bettye Parker Smith.
Her dissertation, Daughters of Sorrow:Attitudes Toward Black Women, 1880-1920 (Carlson, 1991).
Words of Fire:An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought (New Press, 1995).
An anthology she co-edited with Rudolph Byrd entitled Traps:African American Men on Gender and Sexuality (Indiana University Press, 2001).
A book coauthored with Johnnetta Betsch Cole, Gender Talk:The Struggle for Women’s Equality in African American Communities (Random House, 2003).
An anthology, I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde, co-edited with Rudolph P. Bryd, Johnnetta B. Cole, and Guy-Sheftall (Oxford University Press, 2009).
An anthology, Still Brave: The Evolution of Black Women’s Studies (Feminist Press, 2010), with Stanlie James and Frances Smith Foster.
Her most recent publication (SUNY Press, 2010) is an anthology co-edited with Johnnetta B. Cole, Who Should Be First:Feminists Speak Out on the 2008 Presidential Campaign.
In 1983 she became founding co-editor of Sage:A Scholarly Journal of Black Women which was devoted exclusively to the experiences of women of African descent.