BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
X-WR-CALNAME:www.indybay.org
PRODID:-//indybay/ical// v1.0//EN
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:Indybay-7373
SEQUENCE:7373
CREATED:20020511T011000Z
DESCRIPTION:FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE \nMay 9, 2002\nMedia Contact: Hannah Doress, 415 
 453-8160\nAfter May 15th, Ellen Samuels, 510-981-1621, 
 esamuels@uclink4.berkeley.edu\n\nWallflowers no more!\nConference heralds 
 birth of queer disability movement\nHistoric conference to be a veritable 
 who’s who of celebrated leaders, writers and artists\n\nOn Sunday and 
 Monday June 2-3, 2002, academics, activists, experts, artists and luminary 
 speakers will converge on San Francisco for the historic launch of 
 Disability and Queerness: The First International Conference. Eloquent and 
 edgy notables to speak from the accessible podium will include: 
 Lambda-nominated editor, author, playwright, film and dvd-maker RAYMOND 
 LUCZAK -- well known for the Alyson anthology Eyes Of Desire: A Deaf Gay 
 and Lesbian Reader and A Pair of Hands: Deaf Gay Monologues which premieres 
 in June at New York’s HERE Theater; Celebrated Painter and School of the 
 Art Institute professor RIVA LEHRER whose stunning “Circle Stories” 
 series brings to life artists and academics who have significant 
 disabilities and explore disability in their own work; Lehrer portrait 
 subject, conference organizer, and author of Exile and Pride: Disability, 
 Queerness, and Liberation(South End Press, 1999) Eli Clare, and more. 
 \n\n“Queers with disabilities are no longer content to play the 
 wallflower at events which focus exclusively on queerness or disability” 
 quipped organizer Ellen Samuels, “We’re throwing our own party this 
 year, which promises to be thought-provoking, influential, and 
 welcoming.” And quite a party it will be with John Killacky, Director of 
 the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts taking charge of entertainment for the 
 event.\n\nPromising intellectual stimulation, schmoozing and education, in 
 addition to entertainment, the halls of San Francisco State University will 
 be buzzing with a crowd of over 250 lesbians, gay men, bisexual, 
 transgendered, intersexed people who have physical and mental disabilities, 
 and their partners, friends and allies hailing from climes as far as 
 Denmark and Australia. “The timing couldn’t be better” enthused 
 conference organizer and author Eli Clare, “we have been overwhelmed by 
 the volume and quality of presentation submissions, and thrilled with the 
 rush of early registrations -- clearly the conference will meet a 
 substantial need.” Attendees are flocking to see the very latest in 
 academic research, advocacy strategies, and cultural performances. They 
 will come to network, organize, cruise, -more-\n\neducate, and celebrate 
 together in a one of a kind gathering appropriately hosted in the world’s 
 queerest city. Organizers promise that equal emphasis will be given to 
 academics and scholars presenting cutting-edge studies and analyses, queer 
 disability activists engaged in social change, and artists committed to 
 creating a vital “queer crip” culture. Presentation formats will run 
 the gamut from workshops, to performances, poetry readings, displays of 
 artwork, and paper panels.\n\n“The conference exists to broaden notions 
 of disability and queerness,” stressed Corbett O'Toole, founder and 
 director of the Disabled Women's Alliance, a major sponsor of the event., 
 “and includes the participation and concerns of a wide variety of people, 
 from Deaf gay men to intersexed folks, from lesbians with CFIDS to trans 
 folk with cancer.” Just a few examples of issues to be addressed include 
 Disabled Queers in the Arts, Partners of Disabled Queers, Surviving 
 Homophobia in Disability Services, and HIV and the Hemophiliac Community. 
 Featured speakers include activist writer and speaker Diana Courvant, Vicky 
 D’Aoust of Lesbian Contradiction, Emi Koyama of the Intersex Society of 
 North America. \n\nOrganized completely by volunteers, themselves an 
 impressive array of experts and authors, The Disability and Queerness 
 Conference has attracted an enviable roster of cosponsoring institutions 
 and organizations including San Francisco State University's Disability 
 Programs and Resource Center, Human Sexuality Studies Program, Institute on 
 Disability; and School of Social Work; University of California at 
 Berkeley’s Presidential Chair in Undergraduate Education, Disability 
 Studies Program; Queer Council, Lesbian Bay Bisexual Studies Program, and 
 Center for the Study of Sexual Culture; the Disabled Women's Alliance, a 
 project of the San Francisco Women's Centers, Inc., and the National Center 
 for Lesbian Rights.\n\nFor information, to register, or to sponsor the 
 event, please go to http://www.disabledwomen.net/queer/ or call 
 510-235-7477.\n\nInterviews and photographs are available upon request. 
 \n####\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n(Separate page with bios)\nDisability and 
 Queerness Conference -- FEATURED SPEAKERS\n\nPoet, essayist, and 
 rabble-rouser, ELI CLARE is the author of Exile and Pride: Disability, 
 Queerness, and Liberation and a member of the organizing committee that 
 brings you this conference. Eli’s work has \nbeen published in a variety 
 of anthologies and periodicals, including Victoria Brownsworth's Restricted 
 Access: Lesbians on Disability and Bob Guter and John Killacky’s 
 forthcoming anthology of writing by \ndisabled gay men. With a long history 
 as a dyke and a joyful present as a tranny whose life doesn’t fit into 
 the gender binary, Eli walks the borders and embraces complexity.\n\nDIANA 
 COURVANT’s activist buttons and t-shirts, laid end to end, would stretch 
 from San Francisco to Portland, Oregon, the lovely city she calls home. But 
 she doesn’t have time for that kind of thing, what with \nall the writing 
 and speaking about domestic violence, anti-racism, disability rights, and 
 trans, intersex, and queer liberation. Her identities include, but are not 
 limited to: disabled, total dyke, activist, trans, smut-writer, and 
 fire-eating babelicious goddess-chick. She also makes a mean peanut curry.  
 \n\nVICKY D’AOUST began writing for Lesbian Contradiction shortly after 
 adopting her daughter over 15 years ago. Since then, she has been published 
 in legal journals, three book-length anthologies about \nlesbian identity 
 and disability parenting, and many other collections of stories. She 
 watches X Files, doesn’t usually attend conferences, and prefers the 
 virtual life to the corporeal one. This will be her first major appearance 
 since Outrights Conference in Vancouver in 1991. She is a bi-cultural, 
 bi-polar, borderline academic with multiple disabilities.\n\nEMI KOYAMA is 
 a multi-issue social justice slut, synthesizing feminist, Asian, survivor, 
 dyke, queer, sex worker, intersex, genderqueer, and crip politics. These 
 factors, while not a complete descriptor of who she is, have all impacted 
 her life. Emi is currently the Program Assistant for Intersex Society of 
 North America, and the Community Board Chair for Survivor Project. Emi 
 lives in Portland, Oregon, and has been putting the emi back in feminism 
 since 1975. Email Emi at emi@eminism.org.\n\nPainter RIVA LEHRER has been 
 showing her work in Chicago since 1980. She focuses on the ways in which 
 the shape of one’s body affects the shape of one’s life, using the 
 language of figure painting. For the \nlast few years she has been most 
 interested in images of people with physical disabilities. Her current 
 project, “Circle Stories,” begun in 1997, is a series of portraits of 
 artists and academics who have \nsignificant disabilities and explore 
 disability in their own work. Participants include Eli Clare, John 
 Hockenberry, Susan Nussbaum, Tekki Lomnicki, and Hollis Sigler. Work from 
 “Circle Stories” and other \nseries have been shown in galleries and 
 museums across the country. Riva was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1958. She 
 attended the University of Cincinnati and the School of the Art Institute. 
 She teaches now at \nthe School of the Art Institute, the Evanston Art 
 Center, and is a visiting artist at a number of other 
 universities.\n\nRAYMOND LUCZAK edited the Lambda Literary Award-nominated 
 anthology Eyes Of Desire: A Deaf Gay and Lesbian Reader (Alyson); he also 
 wrote St. Michael's Fall: Poems (Deaf Life Press). The Tactile Mind Press 
 is publishing his next two books—Silence Is a Four-Letter Word: On Art 
 and Deafness and This Way to the Acorns: Poems-—at the same time this 
 July. Excerpts from his deaf gay novel, Men with Their Hands, have appeared 
 in various periodicals. Seven of his plays have been workshopped and 
 \nproduced around the country; his next show A Pair of Hands: Deaf Gay 
 Monologues will premiere on Friday, June 28th as part of the Queer@HERE 
 Theater Festival at the HERE Theater in New York City. A screenwriter and 
 filmmaker, he lives in New York City where he is completing his debut 
 feature film Ghosted, which he produced and directed. He has just completed 
 his first DVD project called Manny ASL: Stories in American Sign Language, 
 which he also directed; it is coming out at Deaf Way II \nthis July. His 
 web site is www.raymondluczak.com.\n\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2002/05/10/7373.php
SUMMARY:Disability and Queerness Conference
LOCATION:http://www.disabledwomen.net/queer/ 
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2002/05/10/7373.php
DTSTART:20020602T160000Z
DTEND:20020604T160000Z
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR