QUEER MEMOIR: TEACH/PREACH

WITH YOUR HOST KELLI DUNHAM

ALISON GRILLO
Alison Grillo is New York City’s Woman Trapped Inside a Woman’s Body. A stand-up comic with a unique story and an offbeat style, Alison has been seen on NBC’s Last Comic Standing and cited by The Advocate magazine as one of “Seven LGBT Comics You Should Not Have Missed in 2011.” Her work has been featured as TimeOutNY’s “Joke of the Week.” Alison is a regular at the Broadway Comedy Club and the creator/host, with Mike Motz, of the recurrent Jokes ‘n’ Gender: A Variety Show,
and the host of Up on the Roof, a weekly stand-up show (during summer months) at the Colonial House Inn, NYC. She appears frequently at clubs, colleges and festivals in the northeast United
States and in Canada, as well as in improv shows at the People’s Improv Theater. The holder of degrees from Drew University, Emerson College and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she has also completed the American Comedy Institute’s one year program. She teaches expository writing at Kean University in Union, N.J., and has published fiction in numerous literary magazines.

ANDRE AZEVEDO
Bio to come

DW SHANLEY
DW Shanley has been described as having “the soul of a teacher”. He works tirelessly to bring love and learning to his kids in the South Bronx, despite a ridiculous daily three hour round trip commute from Brooklyn. When not commuting, prepping, grading, or mentally plotting how to rev up his 7th graders, Devon rests by reading lots of James Baldwin, spending time with his amazing cat Tifa, and strengthening his soccer knowledge (despite only getting into the sport last year). He is currently working on his memoir.

JADE FOSTER
Jade Foster is a writer and producer of queer women poetry tour, The Revival. Her poems and articles have appeared in “Words, Beats, and Life,” “make/shift,” “SWERV Magazine,” “Clutch Magazine” and other publications. She’s also a castmember of queer women of color webseries, The Peculiar Kind.

LENNY ZENITH
Lenny Zenith is a writer and musician from New Orleans, who currently lives in NYC with his wife, Anne and their cat, Seymour. He works as a web manager, and still performs his music. He identifies as a Latino queer transman and is often featured at NYC’s “Loser’s Lounge”. “The Car Song” by his 90’s band Jenifer Convertible was featured on the Trans-Genre CD compilation. Over the years he’s shared the stage with Gang of Four, Iggy Pop and U2 among others. His latest band is Minor Planets (http://myspace.com/minorplanets), and he is currently completing his memoir “Before I Was Me” due out in 2013.

M TAURET DAVIS
M.Taueret Davis is a Brooklyn-based artist, performer, and queer femme body liberationist.

SARAH SCHULMAN
Sarah Schulman is the author of the novels: THE MERE FUTURE, THE CHILD, SHIMMER, RAT BOHEMIA, EMPATHY, PEOPLE IN TROUBLE, AFTER DELORES and THE SOPHIE HOROWITZ STORY and the nonfiction books: THE GENTRIFICATION OF THE MIND: Witness to a Lost Imagination, TIES THAT BIND: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences, STAGESTRUCK: Theater, AIDS and the MArketing of Gay America, MY AMERICAN HISTORY: Lesbian and Gay Life During The Reagan/Bush Years. Plus the plays Carson McCullers, MANIC FLIGHT REACTION and the stage adaptation of IB Singer’s ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY. She is co-director with Jim Hubbard of The ACT UP Oral History Project (www.actuporalhistory.org) and co-producer of UNITED IN ANGER: A History of ACT UP, a feature documentary directed by Hubbard. Sarah is co-author with director Cheryl Dunye of two films: THE OWLS and MOMMY IS COMING, both selections of the Berlin Film Festival. She was co-ordinator of the First US Tour of Leaders of the Palestinian Queer Movement and the first LGBT Delegation to Palestine.

WITH YOUR HOST

KELLI DUNHAM
Kelli Dunham is everyone’s favorite ex-nun genderqueer nerd comic and the co-founder and co-host, with Genne Murphy of Queer Memoir. This September, she will be releasing her third comedy CD “Freak of Nurture: Why Is The Fat One Always Angry. (kellidunham.com)

Even as LGBT characters and “out” celebrities become more common in pop culture and mainstream media, the richness and complexity of real queer lives is still undervalued and often invisible. Queer Memoir attempts to provide an avenue to share queer lives and celebrate the ritual and community-building value of storytelling.

QUEER MEMOIR: DOCUMENTING QUEER STORIES, CELEBRATING QUEER LIVES