Wallflowers no more!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 9, 2002
Media Contact: Hannah Doress, 415 453-8160
After May 15th, Ellen Samuels, 510-981-1621, esamuels [at] uclink4.berkeley.edu

Wallflowers no more!
Conference heralds birth of queer disability movement
Historic conference to be a veritable who’s who of celebrated leaders, writers and artists

On 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.

“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.

Promising 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, educate, 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.

“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.

Organized 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.

For information, to register, or to sponsor the event, please go to http://www.disabledwomen.net/queer/ or call 510-235-7477.

Interviews and photographs are available upon request.
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Disability and Queerness Conference -- FEATURED SPEAKERS

Poet, 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
been 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 disabled 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.

DIANA 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
all 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.

VICKY 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
lesbian 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.

EMI 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 [at] eminism.org.

Painter 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 last 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
significant 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
series 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
the School of the Art Institute, the Evanston Art Center, and is a visiting artist at a number of other universities.

RAYMOND 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 produced 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 this July. His web site is http://www.raymondluczak.com.