summer 2014
Poster by Tiaré Jung.
jotika |
seema shah
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Jotika is a mixed media artist, singer, writer, listener, community organizer and aspiring social worker. She is a Queer, Poor, Brown, Femme whose roots are in Fiji and Northern India. She identifies as a settler on land that was stolen from the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Stó:lō, Burrard and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. Her art and writing aims to understand the effects of colonization that her families have experienced and also to examine and learn to how stand with folks whose land she is a settler on; who have and continue to experience colonization.
romham pádraig gallacheri’m a white fat queer trans genderqueer g/imp sober anarchist survivor working-class-turned-feeble-ass, accordion-playing-but-barely-dancingbear, living endlessly grateful with a beautiful community of troublemakers on the rainy unceded Coast Salish Territories of the Musqueam, TsleilWaututh and SkwxwÃo7mesh peoples. i’m currently moving from selfdeprecatingly conceptualizing my writing and accessibilities work as “navel gazing” and “spreadsheet hell”, respectfully, to “confessional” and “experiential”. like me, it’s a variously successful workinprogress.
irit shimrat
Irit Shimrat is an escaped lunatic who has a bee in her bonnet with regard to psychiatry. She co-founded the Ontario Psychiatric Survivors’ Alliance in 1990. Her book Call Me Crazy: Stories from the Mad Movement was published in 1997 in Vancouver.
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Seema Shah is a Queer South Asian writer living in Vancouver, B.C., Unceded Coast Salish Territories. Her interest in writing was rekindled after leaving the practice of medicine several years ago due to chronic illness and disability. This change in life circumstance also sparked her interest in the multiple ways that the arts intersect with health. Seema mainly writes autobiographical creative nonfiction, usually stemming from the places where she lives on the margins. Her writing has been published in various anthologies and journals over the past decade. In addition, she has worked on projects that involve the use of the arts in health care and has published articles related to these experiences in interdisciplinary texts and journals, including a chapter in the text ‘Creative Arts in Interdisciplinary Practice: Inquiries for Hope & Change’. Writing and visual art have been vital means of countering some of the isolation and limitations Seema has experienced secondary to ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) and depression; they have provided her a way to stay connected to the outside world and helped her find a new focus and sense of meaning within her changed, more narrowly-defined world. Her piece, “Jane Wayne”, was shortlisted for the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives’ First Person Narrative Essay Contest in 2008 and was published last year in the Archives’ anthology, ‘Keeping Our Stories Alive’. Seema is currently in the process of reviving a couple of creative projects that use a combination of text and image. Her creative muses, Finnegan and Sadie, still live with her in spirit.
alex lu
Alex Lu is a community organizer of disability justice who works with Vancouver queer communities to foster intersectional practices around accessibility. When not working in the community, he conducts biological research, having recently contributed to a body of research on tendon disease with UBC. He currently resides in Vancouver.
katrina elisse caudle
Katrina Elisse Caudle is a biracial, polyglamorous Caribbean femme who has worked as a sex worker, community organizer, and artist. She writes dreamy, short, speculative fiction & creates immersive, interactive art installations where you can talk to the spirits. Her experience in sex work has ranged from escorting, to porn, to sacred devotion. Her hobby is hiding charms in public spaces and her motto is “Make it enchanting, make it exquisite”.
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