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Our first Philadelphia salon, in Partnership with First Person Arts!

Tuesday, July 20, 2010, 8pm

The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104

Tickets- $10 ($8 for First Person Arts Members)

Advance tickets at salons.firstpersonarts.org

Or visit our facebook event page to RSVP and purchase tickets.

PHILADELPHIA- First Person Arts is proud to partner with the NYC-based salon series Queer Memoir for an evening of storytelling through the lens of queer experiences.  The theme “Sticks and Stones” will guide a line-up of queer and LGBT storytellers as they share real stories drawn from their own lives.

Presenters are noted Philadelphia theatre artists, writers, storytellers and community organizers, including:

• Chris Bartlett, Executive Director of the William Way LGBT Community Center
• Rae Drew, First Person Arts storyteller
• Kevin Glaccum, Producing Artistic Director of Azuka Theatre
• Justin Jain, actor with the Arden Theatre Company and Berserker Residents
• Maura Kelly, co-founder of the Philadelphia Dyke March
• Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, award-winning author
• R. Eric Thomas, First Person Arts storyteller

Co-hosted by Queer Memoir founders Kelli Dunham and Genne Murphy. (www.queermemoir.com)

STORYTELLERS

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.

Rae Drew is a transgender-identified human who often feels like an odd weed growing through a crack in the sidewalks of our binary gender system.  Rae is a professional creative manipulator of words and images, and an unprofessional outdoors [hu]man who hikes, bikes, and kayaks as often as possible.

Kevin Glaccum is the Producing Artistic Director of Azuka Theatre and has been a member of the company since he created the role of Guillaume in Azuka’s inaugural production of La Rue des Faux. For Azuka he has directed productions of Whisky Neat, Greek Active, Kid Simple, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Barrymore Nomination; Best Director of a Musical, Philadelphia Weekly). Other credits include The Rocky Horror Show (Arcadia University) and Iron Kisses (Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Theater Festival). Before turning to directing he appeared in Azuka’s productions of Metamorphosis, Friends and An Artist’s Workshop. Kevin is a member of The Lincoln Center Directors Lab.

Justin Jain loves making original theatre. In addition to working with Swim Pony Collaborative Arts, Justin is a founding member of The Berserker Residents, whose original work includes Philly Fringe hits The Jersey Devil, The Giant Squid, and The Annihilation Point. As a performer, Justin has worked with the Arden Theatre Company, Azuka Theatre, Theatre Horizon, People’s Light, and several others. Justin is a proud 2010 graduate of Artists U! Up next: A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Shakespeare in Clark Park and The Very Xmas Christmas Carol Holiday Pageant with Theatre Horizon. http://www.berserkerresidents.com

Maura Kelly has lived in the Gayborhood for 17 years and has no plans of leaving it.  She works at a (you guessed it) non-profit.  Her favorite claim to fame is being one of the founding members of the 1998 Philadelphia Dyke March. She is most happy when surrounded by awesome, lovely queers who, having a shared experience of oppression, lift each other up with love, flirting, support and fierce community.  Okay, mostly the flirting.

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is a writer from Harlem, New York. Her fiction has appeared in publications worldwide, including Callaloo, Best New Writing, Crab Orchard Review, The Minnesota Review, Bloom, Lumina, Philadelphia Stories, Baby Remember My Name, Baobab: South African Journal of New Writing, X-24:Unclassified, and others. A 2006 Best New American Voices nominee, she has received numerous honors and awards from Temple University, The Boston Fiction Festival, New World Theatre, the NAACP, among others. She holds a B.A. from Smith College and an M.A. from Temple University. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, and is completing her first novel.

R. Eric Thomas is a playwright, storyteller and intermittent blogger. He is currently finishing a collection of essays entitled “Enormously Awkward: (Mostly) True Stories + Things That Were Better Left Unsaid.”

CO-HOSTS

Kelli Dunham is an ex-nun, award-winning stand up comic and author. Her books include How to Survive and Maybe Even Love Nursing School (FA Davis, 2004), How to Survive and Maybe Even Love Your Life as a Nurse (FA Davis, 2005), The Boy’s Body Book: Everything You Need to Know for Growing Up YOU (Applesauce Press, 2007) as well as the 2008 version for girls. She is a contributor to numerous humor anthologies including Love’s Funny That Way (Sterling Press, 2006), Squeaky Clean Comedy (Andrew McNeil Press, 2005), She’s So Funny (Andrew McNeil Press, 2004), and Dangerous Families (Haworth Press, 2004). She is the co-founder, with Genne Murphy, of Queer Memoir. http://www.kellidunham.com
Genne Murphy is a Philly native and playwright. She is the co-founder, along with Kelli Dunham, of Queer Memoir. Genne is the General and Program Manager for Philadelphia Young Playwrights (and a 1999 alum), sits on the task force of the Philadelphia New Play Initiative, and is a member of the InterAct Theatre Company Playwrights Forum. Locally, she has had readings or performances of her plays and monologues with Azuka Theatre Company, Flashpoint Theatre Company, Madhouse Late Night Cabaret, and in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS

Queer Memoir is a New York-based salon for new work inspired by a monthly theme, a safe space to share memoir writing and performance, an opportunity to give voice to a collective queer experience, and preserve and document a complex queer history. Queer Memoir provides an avenue to share queer lives and celebrate the ritual and community-building value of storytelling. http://www.queermemoir.com

The First Person Salon Series is a forum for established and emerging artists to present memoir and documentary art. Focusing primarily on local artists working across various media, the First Person Salon Series provides an opportunity for artists to share their work, processes and inspirations. Past presenters have included poet Sonia Sanchez, photographer J.J. Tiziou, writer Lorene Cary, and muralist Steve Powers.

About First Person Arts: Founded in 2000, First Person Arts transforms the drama of real life into memoir and documentary art to foster appreciation for our unique and shared experience. First Person Arts believes that everyone has a story to tell and that sharing our stories connects us with each other and the world. First Person Arts supports the development of memoir and documentary work by artists from all walks of life and provides opportunities for their stories to be heard in programs throughout the year. Regular programming includes twice monthly StorySlams at World Cafe Live and L’Etage, quarterly Edible World events, the First Person Salon Series and the annual First Person Festival of Memoir and Documentary Art at the Painted Bride (November 10-14, 2010). Visit www.firstpersonarts.org.

New York’s queer storysharing event!

Join us for the next Queer Memoir salon! THEME: The Next Morning

Queer Memoir: The Next Morning
Saturday, May 22, @ 8 pm
Brooklyn, NY
FREE

The event is FREE, but we’ll pass the hat for cash to help support the future of QM. To learn more about Queer Memoir and how you can share your work at upcoming events, check out queermemoir.com.

With storytellers:

André Azevedo
Kelli Dunham (host)
Nedra Johnson
Kestryl Cael Lowrey
J.L. Mecum
Genne Murphy (host)
Stephanie Schroeder
Venn Diagrams
* * * * *

BIOS

ANDRE AZEVEDO – is a self-identified foreigner and tranny fag bulldyke. He’s also been known to make art and good Brazilian food; his favorite thing in life is to sit around a table and talk with people. He’s a sex-positive, kink-positive polyamorous person who is always dancing on the thin line between enthusiastic optimism and abject cynicism.

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.

NEDRA JOHNSON – Nedra Johnson is a singer/songwriter multi-instrumentalist born & living in New York City. Her unique style of guitar playing is unmistakably informed by her many years as a professional bassist and keeps her live solo acoustic performances more on an R&B tip then what one might expect of a “girl with a guitar.” Nedra’s self-titled sophomore release is a 2006 OUTMUSIC Award (OUTSTANDING NEW RECORDING – FEMALE) winning, joyful mix of R&B, funk, rock and gospel. Honest in integrity to the music as well as the lyrical content, each song is a testimony of her experience as a black openly lesbian woman in love, spirituality, community and or politics. Nedra has performed internationally at jazz, blues, pride & women’s music festivals as a solo artist and a tuba player/vocalist with her father Howard Johnson & his group, Gravity. She surprised and impressed jazz audiences in Paris, Nime, Berlin, Vienna, Kassel, Macedonia, Muchen, Leverkusen, Los Angeles, New York & New Orleans when she put down her tuba and sang original songs with Gravity garnering such praises as from The Orange County Register, “A little thing [an original from the CD Testify ] called Working Hard for the Joneses had the crowd on its feet and whooping.” As a soloist, she has performed in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Oakland, Cleveland, Madison, Chicago, New Caledonia and more! Whether in front of an intimate audience such as at New York City’s Rockwood Music Hall or a large festival audience of 7000 like Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, Nedra has the ability to perform with both a strength and a vulnerability that makes each listener feel like they are getting to know her on a personal level. Her thoughtful choice of words reflect not only who she is, but speak to the heart in a way that mirrors emotions many find difficult to express, allowing her a fan base diverse in ethnic, cultural and spiritual background.

KESTRYL CAEL LOWREY – Whether on-stage or behind a podium, Kestryl Cael Lowrey considers it his artistic duty to engage his audiences in provocative dialogue without letting them take him (or themselves) too seriously. Kestryl Cael was a member of “The Language of Paradox,” a performance ensemble founded and directed by Kate Bornstein. His writing appears in anthologies such as Kicked Out, and he is half of the performance duo, PoMo Freakshow. His one‐queer‐show, XY(T), has delighted and stimulated audiences from coast to coast, provoking dialogue and fostering change at colleges and communities across the country. It has received critical acclaim, described as “provocative,” “appealingly wry,” “profound,” and “essential.” Kestryl Cael is currently developing 348, his newest solo performance piece. 348 is a searing examination of the troubled teen industry and madness in America, rooted in Kestryl’s own experiences of being held against his will in a “therapeutic boarding school” as a teenager. In addition to performing, Kestryl Cael also lectures and leads workshops for colleges, conferences, community groups, and other organizations. He has appeared at conferences, colleges, festivals, and local theatres across North America. Recent appearances include Kingsborough Community College, Man Enough: The NYU Colloquium on Masculinity, Bard College, the Lewis & Clark College Gender Studies Symposium, and The Inhumanity Conference at York University.

J. L. MECUM was born in a plaid button-up on a cold December morning. The doctors swaddled her in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly and the warmth of its pages secured her destiny. Once freed from the Lower-Middle Class School District of Elmira Heights, NY, she enrolled in NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts to study playwrighting alongside classmate and future-Queer Memoir organizer Genne Murphy. (In fact, the last time she performed was in Genne’s piece entitled “Coney Island.”) These days she can be found in Brooklyn training her tortoise to update her Netflix queue, putting cheese and hot sauce on anything or having passionate arguments with the Pantone Color Matching System. She plans to be a lawyer and pass away in a very nice pair of shoes.

GENNE MURPHY is a Philadelphia native, playwright, and queer femme. She’s passionate about the intersection of the arts, social change, and community-building. Genne also works for a Philadelphia-based arts education non-profit, and is involved with initiatives to expand new play development in her hometown. Genne likes to hang out with fellow storytellers, dreamers, and schemers. She is the co-founder, with Kelli Dunham, of Queer Memoir.

STEPHANIE SCHROEDER is an anti-assimilationist queer feminist dyke who lives and works as a freelance writer in Brooklyn. She is a Contributing Editor at Curve Magazine and writes the Hooked-Up Blog for Curve’s website. She also writes for Shewired.com, Go! Magazine and is the movie reviewer/celebrity interviewer for Lesbian Life at About.com. Schroeder has been working on her memoir, Beautiful Wreck: Sex, Lies & Suicide, for far too long. She is definitely going to finish the book this summer. You can read more about Schroeder and find some of her journalism at http://www.stephanieschroeder.com

VENN DIAGRAMS: Jeffrey Marsh and Rick Sorkin have been working together since 2001. They blend classic cabaret, modern composition / performance and audience interaction. Basically, if they like it, it makes it into the show. That can be a joke about The Golden Girls or a 1930’s German war song. The duo cut their teeth playing the night club circuit in the early days, touring the act around NE America. Highlights have included a project with an 11 piece rock orchestra and SRO shows in venues like Joe’s Pub, Knitting Factory and World Cafe Live.

Did you miss January’s event; Queer Memoir: First Kiss?

Join us for the next Queer Memoir salon! THEME: Scars

Queer Memoir: Scars
Saturday, April 3, @ 8 pm
@ Collect Pond 45 Berry Street
(L train to Bedford Avenue)
FREE

Queer Memoir is a salon for new work inspired by a monthly theme; a safe space to share memoir writing and performance; an opportunity to give voice to our collective queer experiences, and preserve and document our complex queer history; for writers, performers, and anyone with a queer story to tell.

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’s April event will center around the theme “Scars” with readings/performances/sharing by: Kelli Dunham, Ryn Hodes, Tania Katan, Adrian Khactu, Sassafras Lowrey, Genne Murphy, and Mecca Jamilah Sullivan. One or two more performers TBA.

The event is FREE, but we’ll pass the hat for cash to help support the future of QM. To learn more about Queer Memoir and how you can share your work at upcoming events, check out the rest of the site, including our submissions page.

Performer Bios:

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.

RYN HODES is a fifty–something, third–generation New York native, who was recently published in “Visible: A Femmethology.” Ryn is a social worker and domestic violence advocate, a self–defense teacher, a mother, and a passionate, cranky, skeptical, hopeful, old–school femme.

TANIA KATAN is an author, playwright and performer. Her memoir My One-Night Stand With Cancer is the winner of the 2006 Judy Grahn Award in Nonfiction, an honoree of the 2006 American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Award in Non-Fiction, and a finalist for the 2006 Lambda Literary Award. Rock-n-Roller Melissa Etheridge said of Tania’s memoir, “This book rocks! It’s passionate, playful, and downright beautiful,” and the Library Journal gave the book a Star Review. Since the success of her first book, Tania has been performing her one-woman show, Saving Tania’s Privates (adapted from My One Night Stand With Cancer), which made its European premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2008 where it was a critical success! In the U.S. Saving Tania’s Privates has been seen at such prestigious venues as ACT in Seattle and The Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia. Katan is a regular contributor to The Advocate, Compete Magazine, Stand Up To Cancer’s online magazine, and others. And because of her unique ability to write and perform she has become a regular performer at Comedy Central’s Sit-n-Spin. As a public speaker and teacher, Tania is invited to teach writing workshops and give performance-style lectures around the world. Most recently Katan was in Iceland teaching a “Performing for the Camera” workshop as part of the Iceland 700.is Experimental Film and Video Festival. Her work has been written about in The New York Times, Bust, Curve, Running Times, DIVA, GCN Ireland, The Scotsman, and other publications. Tania is extremely proud to be a graduate of the New York Artist in Residence program at the Creative Center, an organization that brings the art making process to the bedsides of people in the hospital dealing with cancer. For more information please visit: http://www.taniakatan.com

ADRIAN KHACTU’s work has been published or is forthcoming in the Atlantic Monthly, Carve, Heritage, and In/Vision. He has won the Richard Moyer Prize in Fiction and the Ezra Pound Prize in Literary Translation, as well as fellowships from Clarion West and Vermont Studio Center. Adrian currently lives, studies, and works in Philadelphia, and he holds shiny, though not entirely profitable, creative writing degrees from Stanford and Temple Universities (where he was a student of Samuel Delany).

SASSAFRAS LOWREY is an internationally award-winning storyteller, author, artist, and educator. She believes that everyone has a story to tell and that the telling of stories is essential in the creation of social change. Sassafras is the editor of the Kicked Out anthology which brought together the voices of current and former homeless LGBT youth. Sassafras regularly teaches LGBT storytelling workshops at colleges and conferences across the country, she is a monthly columnist for Curve magazine, and her prose have been included in numerous anthologies.

GENNE MURPHY is a Philadelphia native, playwright, and queer femme. She’s passionate about the intersection of the arts, social change, and community-building. Genne works for a Philadelphia-based arts education non-profit, and is involved with initiatives to expand new play development in her hometown. She is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and has had readings or productions of her plays in Philadelphia and New York. Genne likes to hang out with fellow storytellers, dreamers, and schemers. She is the co-founder, with Kelli Dunham, of Queer Memoir.

MECCCA JAMILAH SULLIVAN’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in publications from the US, the UK, and South Africa, including Callaloo, Best New Writing, Bloom, Crab Orchard Review, Lumina, Baobab, X-24:Unclassified, Baby Remember My Name, Philadelphia Stories, and others. A graduate of the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the Key West Literary Seminars, the Pan African Literary Forum in Ghana, and other workshops, Mecca’s awards and honors include the Charles Johnson Fiction Award from Crab Orchard Review, the James Baldwin Memorial Playwriting Award from New WORLD Theatre, Shortlist Finalist placement for the 2009 Eric Hoffer Prose award from Best New Writing, and second place for the 2010 American Short Fiction Short Story Contest, judged by Rick Moody. She has held residencies and scholarships from the New York State Summer Writers Institute, the Hedgebrook Writers Retreat, and others. Mecca holds a B.A. in Afro-American Studies from Smith College and an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Temple University. Born and raised in Harlem, New York, she is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, and is completing her first novel.

Queer Memoir’s first event will center around the theme “First Kiss” with readings/performances/sharing by: Renair Amin, VA, Cheryl B, Kelli Dunham, Tara Ellison, Taueret Manu, Genne Murphy and Joel Nichols.

Saturday, January 23, @ 8 pm @  Collect Pond 45 Berry Street (L train to Bedford Avenue). The event is free, but we’ll pass the hat for cash to help support the future of QM. To learn more about Queer Memoir and how you can share your work at upcoming events, check out queermemoir.com.

Save the date! More info coming soon, including a full list of performers.