PRESENTERS & PANELISTS
BVLA Presenters and Panelists in alphabetical order… Take a look right here for details about workshops, panels & skillshares
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: J. ‘Jack’ Halberstam & Carmen Vazquez
Pat Alderete born butch, loves motorcycles, eats meat and married the femme of her dreams, Mary.
Chris Baldwin is a Master Trainer and Mixed Martial Arts Conditioning Coach in Los Angeles. She owns a mobile training business and also serves as the Director of Health and Wellness for the California Lesbian Project.
Adriana Batista was born in Mexico City. She is the co-author of Liberación Homosexual and the author of Smile, the world is Shit, and the poetry collections Ensayo de un Sueño, Epidermic Nihilisms/Nihilismos Epidérmicos and COLORS. Her work has been published in diverse magazines and newspapers in Mexico, USA and Canada. From 1987 to 1990 she was the co-author of the first Latina lesbian comic book titled Sporadica. She represented Mexico as a lesbian author at the International Feminist Book Fair (Montreal, Barcelona and Amsterdam) and at the 54th PEN World Congress, Canada.
Talia Mae Bettcher is an Associate Professor of philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles. She has published several articles on transphobia and transphobic violence and she teaches courses on transgender studies and feminist philosophy. She has been actively involved in Los Angeles transgender community and grass-roots organizing for many years.
Ivy Bottini is a lesbian feminist activist and has worked for lesbian and gay equality for 40 plus years. Ivy is a founder of the first chapter of the National Organization for Women, pioneered HIV education and services and headed successful California statewide initiative campaigns.
Lori Brown is a butch identified Black lesbian. She has spent many years struggling through the unrelenting pressures and stresses of her own internalized homophobia as well as the hysteria of externalized homophobia in her family, the Black community, and in the larger other worlds. She is a Senior Engineer and works for the State of California. In her spare time, Lori provides a community service through mentoring and tutoring high school students in math and science several days a week.
Marie Cartier received her Ph.D. in Religion in 2010 from Claremont Graduate University. Dr. Cartier’s book is Baby You Are My Religion: the Emergence of Theelogy in Gay Women’s / Butch-Femme Bar Culture and Community, based on 102 original interviews with primarily pre-Stonewall gay women (Equinox Press, 2011.) Currently she teaches Gender & Women’s Studies at CSUN and Film Studies at UCI. Her critically acclaimed one-woman show Ballistic Femme premiered in 1997 & she currently performs and exhibits her installation MORGASM, the Museum of Radical Gender and Sex Matrix. (check out items from the MORGASM collection at their vendor booth here at BVLA.)
Jun-Fung Chueh-Mejia is a creative genderfluid spiritual being. Their favorite quote of the moment is, “Your Higher Self is proud of you.”
B. Cole is the founder and Director of the Brown Boi Project, a ground breaking program that serves young masculine of center womyn of color, trans men of color, queer men of color, and straight men of color—pipelining them into social enterprise and the social justice movement. Cole holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and has worked as a community facilitator, strategist, and consultant with non-profits, socially responsible corporations, and governmental agencies for more than 10 years. A graduate of Mills College, Cole is a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholar, Coro Fellow, recipient of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship and the Spirit of Delores Huerta Award. Cole has worked across the US and internationally on issues of community development and leadership development and co-authored Through the Lens of Culture: Building Capacity for Social Change and Sustainable Communities.
Jeanne Córdova is a pioneer founder of the lesbian movement in Southern California, an activist, publisher & author. Currently Co-founder of LEX – The Lesbian Exploratorium – the host of BVLA Conference. She keynoted the Butch Voices Oakland 2009 conference and is a board member of Butch Voices. Her butch essays appear in many anthologies including the Lambda Literary Award winning Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Readerand Dagger: on Butch Women. Her third book, When We Were Outlaws: Love & Revolution in the 70’s, is forthcoming from Alyson Books, Spring 2011. Cordova now serves as Chair of the BVLA 2010 Conference.
Damnyo is an LA native who discovered the empowering effect of words during her teenage years and diligently worked to develop herself as an artist. While many of her peers enjoyed their first years in nightclubs, Damnyo spent her nights at local poetry venues, quickly becoming a well known part of the Los Angeles poetry scene. She was mentored by such noteworthy poets as Taalam Acey and since 2005 she has been a Serafemme artist, student, and advocate of poetry and her community. Damnyo is also the curator of the Damn Slam open mic and has produced numerous shows including Elements. She has performed at USC, UCLA, Outfest, Sistahfest, Fusion, CSULA, SDSU, The Malcolm X Festival, African Marketplace, Berkeley Slam, KPFK, Homo Hop, LA Pride, and Long Beach Pride. She was also the slammaster/coach for the LA Slam Team in 2006 and her book of poetry is entitled “Trap’d”.
JD Disalvatore is a gay rights activist and lesbian filmmaker. She has produced the LGBT films Shelter (2009 GLAAD Award), A Marine Story (Outfest Grand Jury Prize) HBO’s Reunion, Neurotica, Elena Undone for director Nicole Conn, and more. In 2009 she was named one of the GO NYC Magazine’s ‘100 Lesbians We Love.’ She has taught Production Management at AFI, is the former Festival Manager for Outfest and has been a contributing writer for Curve and GayWired.com. She has produced & moderated panels on queer cinema for Outfest, Power Up, The Writer’s Guild of America & the LAGLCC, and guests on Sirius OutQ’s The Frank DeCaro Show speaking on Queer Cinema. She has also been a screenplay competition judge for IFP, Outfest and NewFest. Her daily musings can be read at TheSmokingCocktail.com
Richelle Donigan has been teaching in the Anusara style of Yoga since 2003. Her teaching and practice incorporate her years of Martial Arts studies under the expert tuteledge of Sigung Collen Gragen, and her experience as a professional dancer. How do we as Butch beings on this planet thrive? It all starts with the place that we inhabit from birth, our bodies. Taking care of ourselves is ourselves radical, revolutionary and damn sexy.
Cheryl Dunye, a native of Liberia, holds an MFA from Rutgers University. Dunye’s debut film, The Watermelon Woman, won the Teddy Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. Her second feature, HBO Films’ Stranger Inside, won an Independent Spirit award nomination – best director. Dunye has been honored with a Community Vision Award / National Center for Lesbian Rights, Creative Excellence Award/ Women in Film & Television, and Fusion Award / Outfest. Her latest film, The Owls, a lesbian noir thriller about butch menopause, relationships and murder is showing at film festivals around the world.
Riel Dupuis-Rossi is a Métis (Mohawk, Italian, French & Irish) butch dyke. Riel has recently relocated to Los Angeles from Montréal. Over the last decade, Riel has organized against colonialism, imperialism and war and for the rights to self-determination of sex workers and people affected by HIV/AIDS.
Michelle Ehlen is an independent filmmaker and actress whose artistic butch identity emerged in the third grade when she was cast as a man in the school play. Michelle went on to write, direct, and act in several films with butch protagonists, winning the Grand Jury Award for “Outstanding Actress” from Outfest for her gender-bending performance in Butch Jamie, as well as “Best Feature” from the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. Her short film about a young butch dyke, Half-Laughing, aired on LOGO & Here TV. Michelle is currently in post-production on the upcoming feature comedy POP-U-larity!, and soon plans to shoot a sequel to Butch Jamie.
Vivian Escalante is the founder of Dapper Dyke – for those interested in establishing a dapper lifestyle – offering all kinds of workshops and seminars on vintage clothing and shopping, tailors and more. She has been a past coordinator of the LA Dyke March and motorcycle contingent.
Angie Evans is a butch, a feminist and a musician, pretty much in that order. She has played in countless venues across the country, organizes music and art events around southern California and believes in sisterhood and good espresso. Angie lives in Long Beach and is so honored to be a part of Butch Voices LA! Learn about her music at www.angieevans.com.
Krys Freeman is the founderof theDefinition.org, a social network bringing masculine of center people and their allies together in safe, positive, and affirming space online. A child of the digital age, Krys likes to be thought of as a web 2.0 evangelist. S/he spends her free time testing and exploring new ways to employ web technology to bring about social change. For five years s/he called Los Angeles her home, while completing an undergraduate degree in Urban & Environmental Policy, with a minor in Critical Theory & Social Justice at Occidental College. Krys is also the Conference Co-Chair for the upcoming BUTCH Voices 2011 National Conference in Oakland, where s/he currently resides.
Tracy E. Gilchrist is Editor in Chief: SheWired.com and a self-confessed cinephile with a degree in film theory from Mount Holyoke College. Formerly, she worked as Senior Editor for Here Media’s pioneering Lesbiannation.com. With SheWired, Tracy has spearheaded expanding the site’s video offerings and creating and hosting her Lesbian Film School series. Prior to moving to LA from Connecticut Tracy honed her interviewing style covering celebrities and community pioneers as a frequent contributor to Curve and regional LGBT publications including Boston’s In Newsweekly and New England’s Metroline magazine. She has also contributed entertainment pieces to The Advocate, Advocate.com, Los Angeles magazine and In Los Angeles.
Alicia Gaspar de Alba is an award-winning novelist as well as a professor and poet, whose works include historical novels and scholarly studies on Chican@ art, culture and sexuality. A native of the El Paso/Juárez border, Alicia has created memorable butch & lesbian characters in her books, including ‘Desert Blood’ and ‘Sor Juana’s Second Dream.’ She has lived in Los Angeles since 1992 and currently makes her home in Westchester with her wife, digital artist and muralist Alma Lopez. To read more about her work see www.aliciagaspardealba.net.
Porter Gilberg has recently become completely disillusioned with working inside the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. When not wasting the day away with crossword puzzles and too much coffee, Porter enjoys volunteering and community organizing with various LGBTQ organizations throughout Southern California. Right now you could call Porter a “professional volunteer.” As a secular Jew, Porter has always dreamed of becoming the butch Yenta, and always strives to find others their perfect match.
Kiana M. Green is a graduate student in the department of American Studies & Ethnicity at USC. Her research interests include African American Women’s History, Literature and Film, Black Queer Studies, Theories of Power and Violence, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies, and African American Poetry. She is also a spoken word poet and documentary filmmaker, and is currently working on a project that examines the role of documentary filmmaking in the production of images of Black Lesbians. Additionally, Kiana is currently working on a film entitled, Visions of Abolition: From Critical Resistance to a New Way of Life, the first film to offer an introduction to the history, theory and practices of the contemporary prison abolition movement. This film provides a visual ethnography of the effects of California’s excessive reliance on prisons as a way of dealing with socio-economic problems, with a focus on its impact on women.
Sasha T. Goldberg is a Jewish scholar, educator, and community organizer living in Oakland, California. She holds a Master’s in Judaism from the Graduate Theological Union, and has taught nationally on the intersections of Judaism and various cultural, social, sexual, and religious identities. Sasha also has a long history of queer advocacy and activism, and is often speaking and writing on gender, sexuality, and identity. She currently serves as the Programming Chair for ButchVoices 2011, and as the Facilitator of her monthly Bulldagger group. In her work life, Sasha is the Associate Director of Nehirim: GLBT Jewish Culture and Spirituality. When not organizing or theorizing, Sasha enjoys strong coffee, second helpings of pie, and mid-century design.
Raquel Gutierrez is one of the co-founding members of several queer/Latina/o arts projects and collectives but the one she is proudest of is the performance ensemble, Butchlalis de Panochtitlan (BdP). BdP is a community-based and activist-minded group aimed at creating a visual vernacular around queer Latinidad in Los Angeles. Raquel wrote BdP’s first full-length play, The Barber of East L.A. (dir. by Luis Alfaro & staged at various venues nationally.) A community based performance artist and cultural activist who has performed nationwide, Raquel is also a writer/journalist whose work has appeared in the LA Weekly, Make/shift, Tongues Magazine, Journal of Chicana/Latina Studies, Izote Vos: Salvadoran American Literary and Visual Art and on AfterEllen.com. She was most recently the Assistant Director at the Center for Feminist Research at USC and is now Manager of Community Partnerships at Cornerstone Theater Company.
For the last 28 + yrs of her life Queen Hollins has been a global community spiritual activist. Her journey as a practitioner of universal/indigenous spiritual practices has allowed her to cultivate her ability and technique to hold sacred circle rituals and create a space where people can come into their innate ability to create balance in their lives. She teaches contemporary application of practices for use in healing and personal growth to assist in transforming and healing the conflicts between body, mind and spirit.
Alice Y. Hom documents/writes about lesbian of color herstories and is the co-editor of Q & A: Queer in Asian America. She serves on the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice board and works at Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy.
Ren-yo Hwang is a 2nd year MA student at UCLA, Asian American Studies, working on creative/collaborative academic projects on critical race and masculinities. Trans, poly-ethical, bi-coastal, and constantly dancing in-between survival, resistance and play.
Mel Johnson teaches fine art photography at Cal State University Fullerton where she is completing a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative photogr
aphy. She has performed in drag for the San Diego King’s club at numerous community events and pride festivals for almost 7 years as “Randy Shaft”. Mel’s current body of artwork focuses on the intricacies of female-bodied masculinity.
Betsy Kalin is a producer, writer, director, and programmer at Itchy Bee Productions. Last year, she programmed the film component of LEX’s GenderPlay. She currently is directing the documentary, East L.A. Interchange, and producing, Before Homosexuals. Her film, Chained!, is screening in festivals worldwide.
Joe LeBlanc is a Cajun Genderqueer Butch who is a believer in personal story-telling as a significant method for people to share experiences and solidify a better understanding about LGBTIQ identities, issues, and concerns. Joe is the Founder and Board Chair of BUTCH Voices. He has served as a member of the University of Michigan’s Spectrum Center Speakers’ Bureau and TransGender Michigan. A graduate from the Out in Front Seattle LGBTQ leadership program, he is one of the founders and the Volunteer Administrator for Q Patrol PDX, Portland’s first ever LGBTQ community foot patrol. Joe has presented panel workshops at the 2008 Borders & Bridges Conference, the 2008 Femme Conference, and the 2009 BUTCH Voices National Conference. Joe enjoys endless conversations about gender and sexuality, interlaced with talks about pop culture and fighting prejudice.
Sandy Lee resents the term “soft butch.” She works and studies in Los Angeles, where she also makes a home with her partner and two cats.
Bo Luengsuraswat is a practicing visual artist and recent graduate from the Asian American Studies MA program at UCLA. His thesis research explores the experiences of Asian American FTMs through artistic and cultural production.
Alma Lopez is a Mexican-born Chicana artist, activist and visual storyteller. With Dr. Gaspar de Alba, she co-edited a publication project that takes a multifaceted look at the attempted censorship of her digital collage titled, “Our Lady.” This book is accompanied by her most recent documentary video titled, “I Love Lupe” and will be available from the University of Texas Press in 2011. www.almalopez.com
Mistress Marry is a Femme/Leather Dyke and Professional Dominant who enjoys making the world a happier place, one orgasm at a time. She has been a sex educator for years, organizer of Kink events like Wicked Womyn & VP of Seattle Women of Leather. When not cruising hot leather Queers, she can be found riding her motorcycle up and down the coast.
Kimi Mojica, a genderqueer/boi grounded and guided by practices of mindfulness and liberation. bell hooks’ quote “love is as love does” inspires Kimi’s attempts to counter patriarchal cultures of domination.
Cathy Opie is one of our generation’s most celebrated photographers, whose career was honored with a highly successful mid-career retrospective at the Guggenheim museum in NYC in 09. Her work is often visibly queer- themed, including the series ‘Being & Having‘ – that addresses performing masculinities and the recent ‘Girlfriends’, which included photos from her archive of “friends and lovers” and new portraits (including JD Samson, Jenny Shimizu and Katherine Moennig) to show images of ”iconic butch lesbians.”
Kimberly Peirce is a self-identified butch who has staked her place as a director of singular vision and craft with her unflinching debut feature film, Boys Don’t Cry. Boys Don’t Cry became one of the most acclaimed and talked about films of the year, earning honors including the Best Actress Oscar, a Golden Globe, Independent Spirit Awards, NY and LA Critics Awards, and the National Board of Review Award. Her most recent film, Stop-Loss, is a topical and emotionally penetrating drama. Kimberly is a storyteller who focuses on identity related stories and is navigates the business and media world as a butch. Kimberly received her BA from the University of Chicago and MFA from Columbia University, and is a graduate of the Sundance Institute.
Lisa Powell has been an organizer and leader in the LGBT movement since 1986, when she first volunteered with the “No on 64” campaign and the Minority AIDS Project in Los Angeles. She received her Juris Doctorate from UCLA and practiced civil litigation for thirteen years during which time she never lost a jury trial. In 2008, Lisa worked as a Deputy Field Organizer for the Obama campaign, which led her to co-found Black Lesbians United (BLU) in March 2009. Following the passage of Proposition 8, she co-founded Camp Courage, an organizer training inspired by Camp Obama. Currently, she is Los Angeles Region Organizer for California Faith for Equality.
Evren Savci is a self-identified femme, who is obtaining her Ph.D in Sociology and Gender Studies at USC, with research that focuses on queer subcultures and politics in her native Turkey.
Courtney Shane is an actor, dancer, and comedian from Los Angeles, CA. She has been teaching Salsa and Swing dance in the L.A. & Bay Areas for the past 12 years. Courtney earned a degree in Dance, and a B.A. in Theatre Arts at SFSU. She has performed live in Salsa, Swing, Tap, African, Brazilian, and Hip-Hop dance styles and appeared in independent films such as Reunion and Before I Die. She just co-created/starred in the CMPS Productions Carly Simon “You’re So Vain” Music Video. www.courtneytshane.com.
J. Greyson Vega, a Transmasculine Butch, was raised in the City of Los Angeles. Greyson came out, got sober, graduated college and began his career in urban planning and activism in LA. As a Latino Queer Activist, Greyson has chaired and served on non-profit boards for Latino/a, LGBTQ and religious organizations, as well as serving as a Commissioner for the City of Berkeley. Greyson has spent his career in urban planning for the state of California as a proud, out butch and this year completed his gender transition in his workplace of the past 19 years. Greyson is currently pursuing a masters degree in divinity to realize his continuing goal of serving his community as an activist, sober Transmasculine Butch and future Ministerial Student of New Thought Philosophy.
Vallerie D. Wagner is the Director of Education at AIDS Project Los Angeles. She also served as COO at the Black AIDS Institute and the Director of Education & Social Services at the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center. Ms. Wagner worked as an engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a member of the Technical Teams for the Voyager and Galileo Projects for 15 years. She received her M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Tuskegee Institute in 1983 -the first woman to receive a master’s degree in engineering there. Ms. Wagner has been a strong advocate for the human rights of the LGBT community and people living with HIV/AIDS for more than 20 years. She currently serves on the board of directors of the National Association of People With AIDS and CSW/LA Pride.
Jay Walls is a Butch activist, abstract expressionist artist, and proud parent. She was the Programming Coordinator for BV Portland and curated the art exhibition A Taste of BUTCH Flavor. She is also the Operations Coordinator for the Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, and she has created two short films Super Speed and On the Cutting Edge. She is currently a stay at home parent of 5 foster/adoption siblings, and has never worked harder in her life!
Terry Wolverton is author of seven books: Embers, a novel-in-poems; Insurgent Muse: life and art at the Woman’s Building, a memoir; The Labrys Reunion and Bailey’s Beads, novels; and three collections of poetry: Black Slip, Mystery Bruise and Shadow and Praise. A new novel, Stealing Angel, will be published in 2011. She has also edited fourteen literary anthologies and is the founder of Writers At Work, a creative writing center in Los Angeles, where she teaches fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.
Carolyn Wysinger is a thirtysomething African-American soft stud/tomboi living in Long Beach, Ca., originally from the San Francisco Bay Area city of Richmond, Ca. She graduated from CSU Long Beach with a BA in English & Antioch University with an MFA in Creative Writing.
Chris Baldwin is a Master Trainer and Mixed Martial Arts Conditioning Coach in Los Angeles. She owns a mobile training business and also serves as the Director of Health and Wellness for the California Lesbian Project.Adriana Batista was born in Mexico City. She is the co-author of Liberación Homosexual and the author of Smile, the world is Shit, and the poetry collections Ensayo de un Sueño, Epidermic Nihilisms/Nihilismos Epidérmicos and COLORS. Her work has been published in diverse magazines and newspapers in Mexico, USA and Canada. From 1987 to 1990 she was the co-author of the first Latina lesbian comic book titled Sporadica. She represented Mexico as a lesbian author at the International Feminist Book Fair (Montreal, Barcelona and Amsterdam) and at the 54th PEN World Congress, Canada.Talia Mae Bettcher is an Associate Professor of philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles. She has published several articles on transphobia and transphobic violence and she teaches courses on transgender studies and feminist philosophy. She has been actively involved in Los Angeles transgender community and grass-roots organizing for many years.Ivy Bottini is a lesbian feminist activist and has worked for lesbian and gay equality for 40 plus years. Ivy is a founder of the first chapter of the National Organization for Women, pioneered HIV education and services and headed successful California statewide initiative campaigns.
Lori Brown is a butch identified Black lesbian. She has spent many years struggling through the unrelenting pressures and stresses of her own internalized homophobia as well as the hysteria of externalized homophobia in her family, the Black community, and in the larger other worlds. She is a Senior Engineer and works for the State of California. In her spare time, Lori provides a community service through mentoring and tutoring high school students in math and science several days a week.Marie Cartier received her Ph.D. in Religion in 2010 from Claremont Graduate University. Dr. Cartier’s book is Baby You Are My Religion: the Emergence of Theelogy in Gay Women’s / Butch-Femme Bar Culture and Community, based on 102 original interviews with primarily pre-Stonewall gay women (Equinox Press, 2011.) Currently she teaches Gender & Women’s Studies at CSUN and Film Studies at UCI. Her critically acclaimed one-woman show Ballistic Femme premiered in 1997 & she currently performs and exhibits her installation MORGASM, the Museum of Radical Gender and Sex Matrix. (check out items from the MORGASM collection at their vendor booth here at BVLA.)Jun-Fung Chueh-Mejia is a creative genderfluid spiritual being. Their favorite quote of the moment is, “Your Higher Self is proud of you.”B. Cole is the founder and Director of the Brown Boi Project, a ground breaking program that serves young masculine of center womyn of color, trans men of color, queer men of color, and straight men of color—pipelining them into social enterprise and the social justice movement. Cole holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and has worked as a community facilitator, strategist, and consultant with non-profits, socially responsible corporations, and governmental agencies for more than 10 years. A graduate of Mills College, Cole is a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholar, Coro Fellow, recipient of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship and the Spirit of Delores Huerta Award. Cole has worked across the US and internationally on issues of community development and leadership development and co-authored Through the Lens of Culture: Building Capacity for Social Change and Sustainable Communities.
Jeanne Córdova is a pioneer founder of the lesbian movement in Southern California, an activist, publisher & author. Currently Co-founder of LEX – The Lesbian Exploratorium – the host of BVLA Conference. She keynoted the Butch Voices Oakland 2009 conference and is a board member of Butch Voices. Her butch essays appear in many anthologies including the Lambda Literary Award winning Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Readerand Dagger: on Butch Women. Her third book, When We Were Outlaws: Love & Revolution in the 70’s, is forthcoming from Alyson Books, Spring 2011. Cordova now serves as Chair of the BVLA 2010 Conference.
Damnyo is an LA native who discovered the empowering effect of words during her teenage years and diligently worked to develop herself as an artist. While many of her peers enjoyed their first years in nightclubs, Damnyo spent her nights at local poetry venues, quickly becoming a well known part of the Los Angeles poetry scene. She was mentored by such noteworthy poets as Taalam Acey and since 2005 she has been a Serafemme artist, student, and advocate of poetry and her community. Damnyo is also the curator of the Damn Slam open mic and has produced numerous shows including Elements. She has performed at USC, UCLA, Outfest, Sistahfest, Fusion, CSULA, SDSU, The Malcolm X Festival, African Marketplace, Berkeley Slam, KPFK, Homo Hop, LA Pride, and Long Beach Pride. She was also the slammaster/coach for the LA Slam Team in 2006 and her book of poetry is entitled “Trap’d”.
JD Disalvatore is a gay rights activist and lesbian filmmaker. She has produced the LGBT films Shelter (2009 GLAAD Award), A Marine Story (Outfest Grand Jury Prize) HBO’s Reunion, Neurotica, Elena Undone for director Nicole Conn, and more. In 2009 she was named one of the GO NYC Magazine’s ‘100 Lesbians We Love.’ She has taught Production Management at AFI, is the former Festival Manager for Outfest and has been a contributing writer for Curve and GayWired.com. She has produced & moderated panels on queer cinema for Outfest, Power Up, The Writer’s Guild of America & the LAGLCC, and guests on Sirius OutQ’s The Frank DeCaro Show speaking on Queer Cinema. She has also been a screenplay competition judge for IFP, Outfest and NewFest. Her daily musings can be read at TheSmokingCocktail.comRichelle Donigan has been teaching in the Anusara style of Yoga since 2003. Her teaching and practice incorporate her years of Martial Arts studies under the expert tuteledge of Sigung Collen Gragen, and her experience as a professional dancer. How do we as Butch beings on this planet thrive? It all starts with the place that we inhabit from birth, our bodies. Taking care of ourselves is ourselves radical, revolutionary and damn sexy.
Cheryl Dunye, a native of Liberia, holds an MFA from Rutgers University. Dunye’s debut film, The Watermelon Woman, won the Teddy Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. Her second feature, HBO Films’ Stranger Inside, won an Independent Spirit award nomination – best director. Dunye has been honored with a Community Vision Award / National Center for Lesbian Rights, Creative Excellence Award/ Women in Film & Television, and Fusion Award / Outfest. Her latest film, The Owls, a lesbian noir thriller about butch menopause, relationships and murder is showing at film festivals around the world.
Riel Dupuis-Rossi is a Métis (Mohawk, Italian, French & Irish) butch dyke. Riel has recently relocated to Los Angeles from Montréal. Over the last decade, Riel has organized against colonialism, imperialism and war and for the rights to self-determination of sex workers and people affected by HIV/AIDS.Vivian Escalante is the founder of Dapper Dyke – for those interested in establishing a dapper lifestyle – offering all kinds of workshops and seminars on vintage clothing and shopping, tailors and more. She has been a past coordinator of the LA Dyke March and motorcycle contingent.
Angie Evans is a butch, a feminist and a musician, pretty much in that order. She has played in countless venues across the country, organizes music and art events around southern California and believes in sisterhood and good espresso. Angie lives in Long Beach and is so honored to be a part of Butch Voices LA! Learn about her music at www.angieevans.com.
Krys Freeman is the founderof theDefinition.org, a social network bringing masculine of center people and their allies together in safe, positive, and affirming space online. A child of the digital age, Krys likes to be thought of as a web 2.0 evangelist. S/he spends her free time testing and exploring new ways to employ web technology to bring about social change. For five years s/he called Los Angeles her home, while completing an undergraduate degree in Urban & Environmental Policy, with a minor in Critical Theory & Social Justice at Occidental College. Krys is also the Conference Co-Chair for the upcoming BUTCH Voices 2011 National Conference in Oakland, where s/he currently resides. 
Tracy E. Gilchrist is Editor in Chief: SheWired.com and a self-confessed cinephile with a degree in film theory from Mount Holyoke College. Formerly, she worked as Senior Editor for Here Media’s pioneering Lesbiannation.com. With SheWired, Tracy has spearheaded expanding the site’s video offerings and creating and hosting her Lesbian Film School series. Prior to moving to LA from Connecticut Tracy honed her interviewing style covering celebrities and community pioneers as a frequent contributor to Curve and regional LGBT publications including Boston’s In Newsweekly and New England’s Metroline magazine. She has also contributed entertainment pieces to The Advocate, Advocate.com, Los Angeles magazine and In Los Angeles.Alicia Gaspar de Alba is an award-winning novelist as well as a professor and poet, whose works include historical novels and scholarly studies on Chican@ art, culture and sexuality. A native of the El Paso/Juárez border, Alicia has created memorable butch & lesbian characters in her books, including ‘Desert Blood’ and ‘Sor Juana’s Second Dream.’ She has lived in Los Angeles since 1992 and currently makes her home in Westchester with her wife, digital artist and muralist Alma Lopez. To read more about her work see www.aliciagaspardealba.net.Porter Gilberg has recently become completely disillusioned with working inside the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. When not wasting the day away with crossword puzzles and too much coffee, Porter enjoys volunteering and community organizing with various LGBTQ organizations throughout Southern California. Right now you could call Porter a “professional volunteer.” As a secular Jew, Porter has always dreamed of becoming the butch Yenta, and always strives to find others their perfect match.
Sasha T. Goldberg is a Jewish scholar, educator, and community organizer living in Oakland, California. She holds a Master’s in Judaism from the Graduate Theological Union, and has taught nationally on the intersections of Judaism and various cultural, social, sexual, and religious identities. Sasha also has a long history of queer advocacy and activism, and is often speaking and writing on gender, sexuality, and identity. She currently serves as the Programming Chair for ButchVoices 2011, and as the Facilitator of her monthly Bulldagger group. In her work life, Sasha is the Associate Director of Nehirim: GLBT Jewish Culture and Spirituality. When not organizing or theorizing, Sasha enjoys strong coffee, second helpings of pie, and mid-century design.Raquel Gutierrez is one of the co-founding members of several queer/Latina/o arts projects and collectives but the one she is proudest of is the performance ensemble, Butchlalis de Panochtitlan (BdP). BdP is a community-based and activist-minded group aimed at creating a visual vernacular around queer Latinidad in Los Angeles. Raquel wrote BdP’s first full-length play, The Barber of East L.A. (dir. by Luis Alfaro & staged at various venues nationally.) A community based performance artist and cultural activist who has performed nationwide, Raquel is also a writer/journalist whose work has appeared in the LA Weekly, Make/shift, Tongues Magazine, Journal of Chicana/Latina Studies, Izote Vos: Salvadoran American Literary and Visual Art and on AfterEllen.com. She was most recently the Assistant Director at the Center for Feminist Research at USC and is now Manager of Community Partnerships at Cornerstone Theater Company.For the last 28 + yrs of her life Queen Hollins has been a global community spiritual activist. Her journey as a practitioner of universal/indigenous spiritual practices has allowed her to cultivate her ability and technique to hold sacred circle rituals and create a space where people can come into their innate ability to create balance in their lives. She teaches contemporary application of practices for use in healing and personal growth to assist in transforming and healing the conflicts between body, mind and spirit.
Alice Y. Hom documents/writes about lesbian of color herstories and is the co-editor of Q & A: Queer in Asian America. She serves on the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice board and works at Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy.Ren-yo Hwang is a 2nd year MA student at UCLA, Asian American Studies, working on creative/collaborative academic projects on critical race and masculinities. Trans, poly-ethical, bi-coastal, and constantly dancing in-between survival, resistance and play.
aphy. She has performed in drag for the San Diego King’s club at numerous community events and pride festivals for almost 7 years as “Randy Shaft”. Mel’s current body of artwork focuses on the intricacies of female-bodied masculinity.
Betsy Kalin is a producer, writer, director, and programmer at Itchy Bee Productions. Last year, she programmed the film component of LEX’s GenderPlay. She currently is directing the documentary, East L.A. Interchange, and producing, Before Homosexuals. Her film, Chained!, is screening in festivals worldwide.Joe LeBlanc is a Cajun Genderqueer Butch who is a believer in personal story-telling as a significant method for people to share experiences and solidify a better understanding about LGBTIQ identities, issues, and concerns. Joe is the Founder and Board Chair of BUTCH Voices. He has served as a member of the University of Michigan’s Spectrum Center Speakers’ Bureau and TransGender Michigan. A graduate from the Out in Front Seattle LGBTQ leadership program, he is one of the founders and the Volunteer Administrator for Q Patrol PDX, Portland’s first ever LGBTQ community foot patrol. Joe has presented panel workshops at the 2008 Borders & Bridges Conference, the 2008 Femme Conference, and the 2009 BUTCH Voices National Conference. Joe enjoys endless conversations about gender and sexuality, interlaced with talks about pop culture and fighting prejudice.Sandy Lee resents the term “soft butch.” She works and studies in Los Angeles, where she also makes a home with her partner and two cats.Bo Luengsuraswat is a practicing visual artist and recent graduate from the Asian American Studies MA program at UCLA. His thesis research explores the experiences of Asian American FTMs through artistic and cultural production.
Alma Lopez is a Mexican-born Chicana artist, activist and visual storyteller. With Dr. Gaspar de Alba, she co-edited a publication project that takes a multifaceted look at the attempted censorship of her digital collage titled, “Our Lady.” This book is accompanied by her most recent documentary video titled, “I Love Lupe” and will be available from the University of Texas Press in 2011. www.almalopez.com
Mistress Marry is a Femme/Leather Dyke and Professional Dominant who enjoys making the world a happier place, one orgasm at a time. She has been a sex educator for years, organizer of Kink events like Wicked Womyn & VP of Seattle Women of Leather. When not cruising hot leather Queers, she can be found riding her motorcycle up and down the coast.
Kimi Mojica, a genderqueer/boi grounded and guided by practices of mindfulness and liberation. bell hooks’ quote “love is as love does” inspires Kimi’s attempts to counter patriarchal cultures of domination.Cathy Opie is one of our generation’s most celebrated photographers, whose career was honored with a highly successful mid-career retrospective at the Guggenheim museum in NYC in 09. Her work is often visibly queer- themed, including the series ‘Being & Having‘ – that addresses performing masculinities and the recent ‘Girlfriends’, which included photos from her archive of “friends and lovers” and new portraits (including JD Samson, Jenny Shimizu and Katherine Moennig) to show images of ”iconic butch lesbians.” Lisa Powell has been an organizer and leader in the LGBT movement since 1986, when she first volunteered with the “No on 64” campaign and the Minority AIDS Project in Los Angeles. She received her Juris Doctorate from UCLA and practiced civil litigation for thirteen years during which time she never lost a jury trial. In 2008, Lisa worked as a Deputy Field Organizer for the Obama campaign, which led her to co-found Black Lesbians United (BLU) in March 2009. Following the passage of Proposition 8, she co-founded Camp Courage, an organizer training inspired by Camp Obama. Currently, she is Los Angeles Region Organizer for California Faith for Equality.
Evren Savci is a self-identified femme, who is obtaining her Ph.D in Sociology and Gender Studies at USC, with research that focuses on queer subcultures and politics in her native Turkey.
Courtney Shane is an actor, dancer, and comedian from Los Angeles, CA. She has been teaching Salsa and Swing dance in the L.A. & Bay Areas for the past 12 years. Courtney earned a degree in Dance, and a B.A. in Theatre Arts at SFSU. She has performed live in Salsa, Swing, Tap, African, Brazilian, and Hip-Hop dance styles and appeared in independent films such as Reunion and Before I Die. She just co-created/starred in the CMPS Productions Carly Simon “You’re So Vain” Music Video. www.courtneytshane.com.J. Greyson Vega, a Transmasculine Butch, was raised in the City of Los Angeles. Greyson came out, got sober, graduated college and began his career in urban planning and activism in LA. As a Latino Queer Activist, Greyson has chaired and served on non-profit boards for Latino/a, LGBTQ and religious organizations, as well as serving as a Commissioner for the City of Berkeley. Greyson has spent his career in urban planning for the state of California as a proud, out butch and this year completed his gender transition in his workplace of the past 19 years. Greyson is currently pursuing a masters degree in divinity to realize his continuing goal of serving his community as an activist, sober Transmasculine Butch and future Ministerial Student of New Thought Philosophy.Vallerie D. Wagner is the Director of Education at AIDS Project Los Angeles. She also served as COO at the Black AIDS Institute and the Director of Education & Social Services at the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center. Ms. Wagner worked as an engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a member of the Technical Teams for the Voyager and Galileo Projects for 15 years. She received her M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Tuskegee Institute in 1983 -the first woman to receive a master’s degree in engineering there. Ms. Wagner has been a strong advocate for the human rights of the LGBT community and people living with HIV/AIDS for more than 20 years. She currently serves on the board of directors of the National Association of People With AIDS and CSW/LA Pride. Jay Walls is a Butch activist, abstract expressionist artist, and proud parent. She was the Programming Coordinator for BV Portland and curated the art exhibition A Taste of BUTCH Flavor. She is also the Operations Coordinator for the Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, and she has created two short films Super Speed and On the Cutting Edge. She is currently a stay at home parent of 5 foster/adoption siblings, and has never worked harder in her life!Terry Wolverton is author of seven books: Embers, a novel-in-poems; Insurgent Muse: life and art at the Woman’s Building, a memoir; The Labrys Reunion and Bailey’s Beads, novels; and three collections of poetry: Black Slip, Mystery Bruise and Shadow and Praise. A new novel, Stealing Angel, will be published in 2011. She has also edited fourteen literary anthologies and is the founder of Writers At Work, a creative writing center in Los Angeles, where she teaches fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.Carolyn Wysinger is a thirtysomething African-American soft stud/tomboi living in Long Beach, Ca., originally from the San Francisco Bay Area city of Richmond, Ca. She graduated from CSU Long Beach with a BA in English & Antioch University with an MFA in Creative Writing.
