Queer Memoir

We’re so looking forward to our November NYC event, returning to the Queers for Economic Justice space. Bios of our amazing storytellers below; don’t forget to RSVP on facebook.

Ryann Holmes

Amber Dawn

Nick Krieger

Dan Horrigan

Lea Robinson

RYANN HOLMES

Born in Washington, DC and raised in neighboring PG County, Maryland, Ryann Makenzi Holmes, is an entrepreneur, student and community organizer. After completing her undergrad in Business and Marketing at George Mason University, she is now completing her final semester of graduate work in Baruch College’s MBA program. From her innovative event planning work with the Women’s Sports Foundation to her dedicated work with Public Interest Projects and The Audre Lorde Project, Ryann is committed to a life lived with integrity.

Settling in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn just over 5 years ago, the city and its energy felt vibrant, artistic and inspiring—all traits that she continually seeks to embody in her personal and professional endeavors. As a founder of bklyn boihood she spends much of her time working on providing visibility and promoting the empowerment of masculine of center folks of color.

After the successful launch of their visionary 2010 calendar, Ryann has set her sights high, committing to the creative expansion of the collective through hosting opportunities for networking, substantial program development and using social innovation to empower individuals and community efforts on a local to global scale.

AMBER DAWN

Amber Dawn is a writer, filmmaker and performance artist based in Vancouver. She is the author of the novel Sub Rosa (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2010), editor of the Lambda Award-nominated Fist of the Spider Woman (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008) and co-editor of With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2005). Her award-winning, genderfuck docu-porn, “Girl on Girl,” has been screened in eight countries and added to the gender studies curriculum at Concordia University. She has toured three times with the infamous Sex Workers’ Art Show. Currently, she is the director of programming for the Vancouver Queer Film Festival.

NICK KRIEGER

Nick Krieger is the author of the memoir NINA HERE NOR THERE: MY JOURNEY BEYOND GENDER, an exploration of the land between man and woman. Reviewers have called it “revolutionary,” “honest,” “funny,” “moving,” and “heartfelt.” Krieger’s writing has earned several travel-writing awards, has been published in multiple travel guides, and has appeared in numerous outlets, including 365gay, Original Plumbing, and the Advocate. A native of New York, Krieger realized at the age of twenty-one that he’d been born on the wrong coast, a malady he corrected by transitioning to San Francisco. He is passionate about activism through art, yoga, and queering all that he can. www.nickkrieger.com.

DAN HORRIGAN

Dan Horrigan got his start telling stories to anyone who would listen at bars and cocktail parties across New York. Dan is thrilled to be bringing his tales to a slightly more sober audience. Another incarnation of The Big A was produced in New York in February of 2010. In addition to being a writer / performer Dan is also a co-founder and Artistic Director of At Hand Theatre Company. At Hand is an independent, non profit theatre company in New York City that produces new plays while using eco-friendly practices. Dan likes to make you laugh and he likes trees and plays! He is proud to have produced Anton Dudley’s Letters to the End of the World, Mark Snyder’s Lila Cante, One Nation Under by Andrea Lepcio and 4 seasons of POP! Dan has directed At Hand’s productions of Cake And Plays Without The Cake by Jono Hustis, Silence! by Brian Dykstra and John Patrick Bray’s Trickster at the Gate. Last season, Dan was honored to have At Hand present his autobiographical solo show, MY AiDS. Other directing credits include Nicky Silver’s The Altruists (Access Theatre), Cindy Lou Johnson’s Brilliant Traces and PS Your Cat is Dead by James Kirkwood. Dan’s television appearances include Cash Cab, playing the role of Gay Guy In The Backseat With All The Wrong Answers (uncredited). He also appeared in Kathy Griffin’s My Life On The D-List playing Laughing Gay Guy in the 3rd Row At The WaMu Theatre (surprisingly, also uncredited). .

LEA ROBINSON

LEA ROBINSON is a multi-talented butch artist. NYC credits include ROOM FOR CREAM (Two-headed Calf/La MaMa), BUTCH MAMAS (WOW Café), The Bulldyke Chronicles (Dixon Place), and The Femme Show. She recently shared a bill with Elizabeth Whitney in the HOT! Festival at Dixon Place in SYRUP IN OUR SHORTS, AND OTHER SOUTHERN PLEASANTRIES, and she is currently working on a new solo show, YOU AIN’T SPECIAL. She also organized and emceed Boxers Off! An Evening of Butch Burlesque at Stonewall—a benefit for the upcoming Butch Voices Conference. She was featured in GO Magazine’s 2009 Edition of 100 Women We Love. www.learobinsonactor.com.

Because of the illness and death of Kelli’s partner Cheryl, Queer Memoir has been on hiatus since March. For our first post-hiatus event, we’re partnering with the amazing organization Queers for Economic Justice, to present QUEER MEMOIR: Letters. It’s going to be an amazing evening, so please RSVP on facebook and come!

ABOUT OUR STORYTELLERS:

ASHLEY M YOUNG
Ashley is a black feminist queer dyke; poet, non-fiction writer and teaching artist. She is the creator of an online writing project for women of color called Brown Girl Love (www.browngirllove.com) and recently completed a chapbook inspired by the project. She is a non-fiction 2011 Lambda Literary Fellow and a 2010 poetry participant of Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation Retreat for Writers of Color. Under the name Indigo, Ashley writes a blog called Indigo’s Theory about her journey through sexuality, Polyamory and womanhood. She also writes a column called “Indigo’s Poly Beginnings” for Fearless Press, an online magazine about relationships and sexuality. Her erotica has been featured in Salacious Magazine and she will be a featured writer in “Perverts of Color” alongside her partner Sara Vibes. She has read her erotica throughout New York City and teaches sex positive workshops in the LBGTQ community. Ashley makes a living as non-profit arts administer and is currently working on her memoir.
KAY ULANDAY BARRETT
A CAMPUS PRIDE 2009 Hot List artist, Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet, performer, educator, and martial artist navigating life as a pilipin@ transgender/queer in the U.S. with struggle, resistance, and laughter. Based in NY/NJ, their work has featured on stages nationally and internationally; from the NJ Performing Arts Center to the Chicago Historical Museum, Brooklyn Museum to Dublin’s Lesbian Arts Festival. Kay’s bold work continues to excite and challenge audiences. Previously, Kay has served on the Board of Directors for Beyondmedia Education and the Advocates Committee for freeDimensional, a social justice resource for the arts activist global community. Honors include: LGBTQ 30 under 30 awards and Finalist for The Gwendolyn Brooks Open-Mic Award. Kay’s work has appeared in several anthologies and journals such as: Make/shift magazine, Kicked Out Anthology, Philippine American Psychology, and Asian Americans for Progress. Kay. turns art into action as a dedicated activist who serves LGBTQ communities and youth. As a critical foodie of color, Kay’s next project is a documentary called Recipes for the People. Check out K. online: http://www.kaybarrett.net/ and http://www.recipesforthepeople.com/

BRYN KELLY
Bryn Kelly is all about the story. She has shared her written work at NYC-based performance series Gayety!, Low Standards, and Queer Memoir; on Showtime’s OurChart.com; and in the forthcoming anthology, Trans/Love: Radical Sex, Love and Relationships Beyond the Gender Binary. She was a cofounder of Theater Transgression, a multimedia performance collective, and has appeared in Dixon Place’s HOT! Festival; in As You Like It at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe; and on NBC’s Law and Order: SVU. She lives in Brooklyn.

JAY TOOLE
Jay Toole is the director of QEJ’s Shelter Project and a real, live superbutch.

R. ERIC THOMAS
R. Eric Thomas (@oureric) is a playwright, teaching artist and storyteller. He is the author of four produced plays, including “The Spectator” (Run of the Mill Theater Company, Baltimore). Eric has read or performed for Second Stories at the Dive, Rant-o-Wheel, Queer Ignite, Superheroes Who Are Super!, Queer Memoir, “Live at Kelly Writers House” on WXPN and Philadelphia’s First Person Arts Story Slams, at which he has competed in the Grand Slam three times. His writing has appeared in Columbia University’s The Collection and the literary magazine, The Q Review. His solo show, “Will You Accept This Friend Request?” premieres November 14 and 15 as part of the First Person Festival. Facebook.com/R.Eric.T

GENNE MURPHY
Genne Murphy is a Philadelphia native and playwright.. She’s passionate about the intersection of the arts, social change, and community-building. She has had readings or productions of her plays in Philly with Azuka Theatre Company, Flashpoint Theatre Company, Madhouse Late Night Cabaret, the Cardboard Box Collaborative, the Annenberg Center/Merge, LIVE at the Kelly Writers House (radio), and in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Check out her first full-length play, HOPE STREET AND OTHER LONELY PLACES to be produced by Azuka Theatre in spring 2012. Genne is the co-producer, with Kelli Dunham, of Queer Memoir (queermemoir.com

KELLI DUNHAM
Kelli Dunham (www.kellidunham.com) is everyone’s favorite nerd gone wild (mild?) stand up comic. She has appeared at colleges, clubs, fundraisers, the occasional livestock auction and on Showtime and the Discovery Channel. You can catch her full length show “Why Is the Fat One Always Angry: Kelli Dunham’s I’m Still Funny Dammit 43 Birthday Show” on October 1 at the Stonewall Inn. You can find her on facebook, youtube, twitter and any future social media platforms still to be invented as (get this cleverness) kellidunham.

Join us for this special salon in Philadelphia on Saturday, March 5 @ 8pm!

The Free Library of Philadelphia invited Queer Memoir to create a special salon as part of One Book, One Philadelphia, and inspired by themes in the writings of author Sherman Alexie.  Queer and LGBT storytellers of all ages will be sharing that night on the theme of “Growing Up.” The salon will be hosted at the local William Way LGBT Center.

Storytellers include:
Chris Bartlett – Executive Director of the William Way
Leyla Eraslan – writer
Staci Priano – Nurse/writer Philadelphia native
R. Eric Thomas – Playwright and First Person Arts story slam winner local
TS Hawkins– Author/Performance Poet
Queer youth from the Attic Youth Center!

BIOS
CHRIS BARTLETT is the Executive Director of the William Way Community Center and a gay men’s health community organizer. Throughout the 1990s he directed the SafeGuards Gay Men’s Health Project in Philadelphia. He also led the LGBT Community Assessment in Philadelphia, a project that gathers data about LGBT communities in order to make recommendations regarding community organizing, health, housing, and economic development. He co-facilitates the Gay Men’s Health Leadership Academy, and has helped to convene the Gay Men’s Health and LGBTI Summits. He can be found on Twitter at http://twitter.com/harveymilk.

LEYLA ERASLAN owes her unrepentant weirdness to a South Jersey upbringing and reading too many books. Currently an employee of a Philadelphia arts education nonprofit, Leyla lives in South Philly, or so it is rumored. In 2008, she wrote, directed and co-produced “Love After Death” for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. She frequents the Walking Fish Theatre Open Mic and has participated in The Five Minute Follies. She has been involved in a smattering of artistic endeavors, and likes the word ’smattering’. Leyla’s passions include art, helping people, and drawing lips in the corners of her notebook.

STACI PRIANO is a 45 year old Lesbian, Nurse, Mom, perpetual student, slightly twisted looker at life, and a Grandmom to boot. She’s been around the block a time or two and has gathered very little moss but has retained a tale or two about the journey; cautionary, maybe, interesting, hopefully. Poignant, funny, gripping? Well, you’ll be the judge.

R. ERIC THOMAS is a playwright, storyteller and essayist. He is the author of the plays “Lost Boy”, “The Spectator” (Run of the Mill Theater Company, 2005), and “The Affair” (LateNite Theater, 2001). He recently won Best Presentation at the First Person Arts Summer Grand Story Slam for his story “My Mother Hates The Facebook”. He is delighted to be reading at his third Queer Memoir and is starting Philly’s own LGBT literary salon this summer. Presently, Eric is working on plays about time travel, Santa Claus, bureaucracy and swimsuit models; cyber-stalk him here: enormouslyawkward.blogspot.com.

TS HAWKINS is an internationally recognized author and performance poet. Her previous publications, Sugar Lumps and Black Eye Blues and Confectionately Yours have been well received in print and radio media since 2007. Expanding her writing skill set, Hawkins will release her first book for teens titled Black Suga: diary of a troublesome teenager, which will debut in early 2011 along with Mahogany Nectar. Recently featured on the Authors Under 30 Book Tour, she is grateful to have traveled around Canada and the United States to share her work with other talented performers/writers. Taping into her theater foundation, Hawkins has been traveling with the American Family Theater for their national tour of Black Journey! For more detailed information, visit http://www.tspoetics.blogspot.com

RSVP on Facebook!

We’re really excited about our upcoming One Year Anniversary Show, with the theme Hello/Goodbye.  We have some amazing storytellers, including Suzanne Kogan, Kay Ulanday Barrett, Jonathan Hollingsworth, Emy Moya, Akiva Penaloza  and Tara Shuai. There will be some awesome edible treats in celebration of our event birthday as well as many more surprises!

Queer Memoir CRUSH is going to be one of our best events yet.  Yeah we say that every time. And it’s true every time!

For more info about the storytellers and the latest updates, check out the event on facebook.

Ah family! In this special holiday edition of Queer Memoir, storytellers will share about about the folks we call family…and the families we make ourselves.

QUEER MEMOIR: SUBWAY
With storytellers: Danielle Abrams, Kelli Dunham, Michele Hunt, Shareef Hadid Jenkins, Bryn Kelly, Genne Murphy and Charlie Vázquez

Saturday, November 13 & 8:30pm. $5-7 suggested donation. Please note there was NOT a wheelchair accessible room available this day, so for this ONE TIME ONLY this is not a w/c accessible event, although it is all ages.

RSVP on Facebook HERE.

BIOS :
DANIELLE ABRAMS is an interdisciplinary artist who works in performance and video. She is a monologist, talk-show host, ballroom dance teacher, ballerina, and a stand-up comedian of yesteryear. Family and social histories are the material Abrams kneads to create contemporary moments with people and places. She channels a multiracial cast of family members, and incites participatory extravaganzas. Abrams’ characters wax poetic from park benches, barbeque “butch burgers”, and lead Conga lines through a Borscht Belt mirage. She utilizes the tropes of personae to inquire about social relationships and cultures, challenge our reliance upon origin and biography, and reveal the frolic, poignancy, tensions, and revolutionary potential that is created at the intersection of diverse communities.

KELLI DUNHAM is a ex-nun, butch-identified stand-up comic and author of four books of humorous non-fiction, including two children’s books being used by a conservative home schooling association in their science curriculum. She has appeared on Showtime, the Discovery Channel and was once asked to emcee a livestock auction. Her website is kellidunham.com. She is the co-founder, with Genne Murphy, of Queer Memoir. To celebrate her 15 year anniversary of leaving the convent, her one woman show “Bad Habit” (sistermercy.com) which premiered at the Fresh Fruit Festival will be returning to New York on 10/23 as the Bad Habit Brunch. This time there will be dancing girls.

SHAREEF HADID JENKINS has been writing plays since the 2nd grade but never finished a single one. One day in his senior year at Temple University, Shareef woke up at 5am from a dream of 3 Women telling their stories of mothering one boy whom they loved and raised the best way they could. When Shareef woke up from that dream the women were still talking and his first play “The Three Mothers of Zachary”, was born. Shareef currently lives and writes on Harlem, New York, and is Artistic Director of Gladys Productions. His latest play, Crystal-meth, 2 boys and a Tranny It’s all about “Getting Your Life” debuted in last years Philly Fringe Festival and you can “FOLLOW” Shareef’s work every day on his blog www.shareefHadidJenkins.blogspot.com

MICHELE HUNT Michele Hunt lived in NYC from 1999-2007, experiencing the wonders of the subway pretty much every day while working in the jewelry district of Manhattan (along with a brief period of working on the Upper East Side). Now living in Portland, Oregon, she works in a new career as a banker (!) and practices on her photography.

BRYN KELLY is a theater artist, producer, writer and musician living in Brooklyn, New York. She recently wrapped a production of ANTIGONE with an all-transgender cast (Theater Transgression); played Rosalind in AS YOU LIKE IT at the Nuyorican Poetry Cafe with a cast of Manhattan Community College drama students; and, most recently, will have played Shelby in a very emotional presentation of a scene from STEEL MAGNOLIAS at Sugarland under the direction of avant-auteur Heather Acs. Though she has given public memoir readings before, this is the first time she has presented in the dramatic idiom *(with the exception of that piece about sucking dick in the stacks of the Ohio State University library system, which received rave reviews) Let’s just hope for the best, shall we?

GENNE MURPHY is a Philadelphia native, playwright, and arts educator. She is the co-founder, with Kelli Dunham, of Queer Memoir (queermemoir.com). She’s passionate about the intersection of the arts, social change, and community-building. Genne works for Philadelphia Young Playwrights, a local arts education non-profit, and is involved with initiatives to expand new play development in her hometown.

CHARLIE VAZQUEZ is a radical Bronx-bred writer of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent. His fiction and essays have been published in various anthologies and have appeared in print and online publications such as The Advocate, Chelsea Clinton News, New York Press, and Ganymede Journal. Charlie hosts a monthly reading series called PANIC! (in the East Village), which focuses on unusual and original fiction and poetry. He is a former contributor to the Village Voice’s Naked City blog and a retired experimental musician and photographer. His second novel Contraband, was published by Rebel Satori Press in spring 2010, and his third, Corazón, is wrapping up for future publication. He is also working on a short story collection and co-editing a gay Latino fiction anthology with novelist and cultural producer Charles Rice-González. Info: http://www.firekingpress.com/