Panelist Bios 2011
Zines and Alternative Publishing
Eleanor Whitney is a Program Officer for External Affairs at the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). Prior to NYFA she worked at the Rubin Museum of Art, where she was the Coordinator of Educational Resources and produced audio tours, videos, and interactive websites. Previously, she was the Academic Programs Coordinator at the Brooklyn Museum where she planned and implemented public programs for adults, taught university students in the museum’s galleries, and oversaw a professional development internship program for university students as well as academic outreach. She is pursuing a Masters in Public Administration at Baruch College’s School of Public Affairs and received her Bachelor’s Degree from Eugene Lang College with a concentration in Cultural Studies and Education. In addition, she plays guitar with a rock band and is a freelance writer.
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 two time American Library Association recognized Kicked Out anthology (www.KickedOutAnthology.com) which brought together the voices of current and former homeless LGBTQ youth. Her prose has been included in numerous anthologies including Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, Queer Girls in Class: Lesbian Teachers and Students Tell Their Classroom Stories, and Visibile: A Femmethology. Sassafras regularly teaches LGBTQ storytelling workshops at colleges and conferences across the country and lives in Brooklyn New York with her family. To learn more about Sassafras and her work, visit www.PoMoFreakshow.com.
Lauren Jade Martin is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center, where her work focuses on assisted reproductive technologies and globalization. She has made dozens of zines over the past two decades, many of which are archived in collections and libraries throughout North America and Europe. She co-founded the Bard Zine Library at Bard College, made the first major contribution of zines to the Barnard Zine Library, and has traveled across Canada and the United States with the Bookmobile Project, conducting zine and bookmaking workshops. Her new zine, Homo Health and Fitness, is a remix of latent queer images and aspirational text from vintage health, fitness, and science textbooks and manuals.
Beyond the Bookstore: The Future of LGBT Publishing
Perry Brass is a 6-time finalist for Lambda Literary Awards, and winner of 3 Ippy Awards from Independent Publisher, poet, novelist, and gay activist. Perry Brass has published 15 books including classics like Mirage, Angel Lust, Warlock, The Substance of God, and Carnal Sacraments, as well as How to Survive Your Own Gay Life. As an activist, he joined the Gay Liberation Front in 1969, right after Stonewall, and became an editor of Come Out!, the world’s first gay liberation newspaper. In 1973, with two friends he helped start the Gay Men’s Health Project Clinic, the first clinic for gay men on the East Coast, strongly advocating the use of condoms a decade before the onslaught of HIV. His newest book is The Manly Art of Seduction, How to Meet, Talk To, and Become Intimate with Anyone. He can be reached through his website, www.perrybrass.com.
Michael-Christopher has been an active voice in the black LGBT community for over 13 years. In 1998 he created LIVING THE LIFE comic magazine, then began writing novels based on the characters. In 2007, Michael’s novel FROM TOP TO BOTTOM was followed by its sequel UNSPEAKABLE. His body of work has garnered attention from publications including Vibe, Honey, The Advocate, MetroWeekly, The New York, Washington Blade and Southern Voices. In 2008, Michael co-created SWERV magazine where he holds the positions of Editor-in-Chief, Art Director, and Co-Publisher. Most recently, Michael has published his first book of photography, MAN:BLACK—Images of Black Male Beauty. Outside publishing, Michael devotes much of his time to HIV-prevention. He has collaborated with agencies such as Global Protection Corp., Behavior Works, AID Atlanta and the Sacramento Department of Health on their campaigns and materials using his designs.
Scott Cranin is a former investment banker who burned out at a mere 30 years old and moved to the Hudson Valley and sold socially responsible investments, antiques and videos. In 2000, he moved to Philadelphia and became editor of LGBT cinema at TLAvideo.com. With a mushrooming e-commerce business, he quickly added LGBTQ books to the site. Scott is now a Managing Director of TLA Entertainment Group where he oversees Purchasing in addition to his web content duties. Scott is also a programmer for Philadelphia QFest, an LGBT film festival and serves on the board of the Lambda Literary Foundation. He lives in Philadelphia with his partner Pat and their lovable dogs, Hilda, Henry and Roscoe.
Jameson Currier is the author of two novels and four collections of short fiction. His newest novel, The Third Buddha, will be published this fall. He started Chelsea Station Editions, an independent press for gay and lesbian books, in the spring of 2010. To date the press has published six books with more forthcoming throughout the year.
Sandy Karp is a graduate of Western Reserve University, Brown University and Tulane University where she studied European history. She has taught at a variety of educational institutions in Louisiana and Pennsylvania. In the 1990s she started her own academic indexing and editorial services business with her partner, Bobbie Geary. In 2005, in New Orleans, she and Bobbie started a small independent press, The Graeae Press, devoted to publishing women’s works of fiction, photography, life-works and feminist analysis. The press has seven books in print and has done every detail—design, layout, editing, cover art, administration, marketing, distribution, etc.—themselves and loved every minute of it. Sandy believes that before print publishing and bookstores disappear entirely there will be a renaissance of author-publisher-printer-bookseller interaction that hasn’t existed since mid-nineteenth century London and looks forward to discussing the transition era of the next ten years with the panel.
Writing the Queer Past
Sarah Chinn is the Executive Director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center (CLAGS), and an Associate Professor in the English Department at Hunter College, CUNY. Her work primarily explores questions of race, sexuality, and gender in U.S. literature and culture, particularly in the 19th century. She is the author of Technology and the Logic of American Racism: A Cultural History of the Body as Evidence (Continuum, 2000) and The Invention of Modern Adolescence: Children of Immigrants in Turn-of-the-Century America (Rutgers University Press, 2009). She is currently working on two book-length projects: Spectacular Men: Early American Drama and National Masculinity, 1780-1830, and Feeling Our Way: The Ethics of Lesbian Reading.
Christopher Bram is the author of nine novels, including GODS AND MONSTERS, which was made into the movie with Ian McClellen and Lynn Redgrave. His most recent book is MAPPING THE TERRITORY, a collection of essays. His next book, EMINENT OUTLAWS: THE GAY WRITERS WHO CHANGE AMERICA, will be published next February. He lives in New York City and teaches writing at Gallatin College at NYU.
Vicki L. Eaklor is Professor of History at Alfred University, where she has taught American history and culture for nearly 30 years, and also serves as AU’s percussion instructor. As both teacher and scholar she seeks to reach those who “hated history” in school and make the past accessible without oversimplifying it. She has authored about 30 publications on topics ranging from American reform movements, to music and film, to gender and sexuality. Recent articles include, “How Queer-Friendly Are U.S. History Textbooks?” (2004, http://hnn.us/articles/3200.html) and “Teaching LGBTQ History: Two Situations,” for the “Controversy in the Classroom” issue of the AHA Perspectives on History (May, 2010). Her book Queer America (Greenwood, 2008) has just been released in paperback from The New Press as Queer America: A People’s GLBT History of the United States. A longtime jazz drummer, she relaxes by playing her vintage set and is learning to restore and custom-build drums.
Brenda K. Marshall is the author of two novels, Dakota, Or What’s a Heaven For and Mavis. She also has one book of scholarship, Teaching the Postmodern: Fiction and Theory. She teaches in the English Department at the University of Michigan. Marshall was born on a farm in the Red River Valley of eastern North Dakota, and has since lived and worked in Colorado, Minnesota, Iowa, Washington, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and, for the past fourteen years, near Ann Arbor, Michigan, with her unwedded spouse of twenty-five years (as well as one cat, two dogs, and two horses). When not writing or teaching, she might be trying to improve her nascent woodworking skills, playing golf or riding horse, working in her vegetable garden, helping in her partner’s huge perennial garden, reading, exercising at the gym, listening to opera, or planning trips, some of which she actually takes.
James Wilson is Professor of English and Theatre at LaGuardia Community College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Areas of research include queer theatre and performance, African American theatre, and pedagogy. His articles have appeared in Urban Education, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, and Theatre History Studies. His essay, “‘Ladies and Gentlemen, People Die’: The Uncomfortable Performances of Kiki and Herb,” appeared in an anthology of lesbian and gay theatre and performances in Fall 2008. He is co-editor of The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, which is published by the Martin E. Segal Center (CUNY Graduate Center). His book, Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Race, Performance, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance, was published by University of Michigan Press in 2010, and a paperback version is forthcoming this summer. ……
Writing Queer Lives
Martin Duberman is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the History Department at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he founded the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies. Widely known for his memoir Cures: A Gay Man’s Odyssey (Penguin Books), he is the author of over twenty books, including the biographies Paul Robeson (Lives of the Left Series/Verso) and The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein (Deckle Edge). He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Bancroft Prize, the Lambda Book Award, and the American Historical Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Scholarship.
Tripp Evans is a Virginian by birth and Rhode Islander by adoption—hence his love for bourbon, Gothic storytelling, and stuffed quahogs. He majored in architectural history at the University of Virginia, and received his Ph.D. in art history from Yale (between degrees, he was a distracted receptionist and voracious reader). Since 1997 he has taught in the Art and Art History Department at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, specializing in American art and culture of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Tripp’s books examine how and why American artists evoke national character in their work—from U.S. explorers’ fanciful representations of the pre-Columbian past (Romancing the Maya: Mexican Antiquity in the American Imagination, 1820-1915) to Grant Wood’s deeply personal use of national iconography (Grant Wood: A Life). Biography—whether of nations, institutions, or individuals – is his favorite genre. In 2005, Tripp and his partner Ed Cabral moved into a former iron foundry in Providence, Rhode Island. The factory’s unusual story, and its site’s ties to colonial, Native American, and geological history are the subject of his next book. Three Acres of Providence will trace the life of this patch of land from continental drift—a time when Rhode Island bordered Morocco—to the post-industrial present. www.trippevans.com/
Wendy Moffat is a Professor of English at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She earned her PhD in English literature from Yale University. A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E.M. Forster (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is her first book. The book received several awards and great praise—Biographers’ Club 2010 Best First Biography Prize; NY Times Top Ten Book of 2010; Amazon Top 10 Gay and Lesbian Book, 2010; Telegraph Book of the Year, 2010; Spectator Book of the Year, 2010; Times Best Books of the Year Selection, 2010; New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice. www.wendymoffat.com/
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