(Or listings for: All Artists involved in QAF 2011 | Facilitators | Performers | Visual Artists | Writers)
Amber Dawn
Amber Dawn is a writer, filmmaker and performance artist based in Vancouver. She is the author of the novel Sub Rosa (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2010), editor of the Lambda Award-nominated Fist of the Spider Woman (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008) and co-editor of With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2005).
C.E. Gatchalian
Born, raised and based in Vancouver, C.E. Gatchalian writes drama, poetry, fiction and non-fiction. He is the author of three books of drama and one book of poetry. His plays, which include Broken, Crossing, Claire, Motifs & Repetitions and People Like Vince, have appeared on stages locally, nationally and internationally, as well as on radio and television.
The recipient of numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council, he has been Playwright-in-Residence at the Vancouver Playhouse and the Firehall Arts Centre, and Writer-in-Residence at the Berton House Writers’ Retreat in Dawson City, YT. Recent publications include his essay “Notes Towards an Essay on Maria Callas,” originally published in the literary magazine ricepaper, which was anthologized in Best Canadian Essays 2011 (Tightrope Books), and his latest play, Falling in Time which premiered in Vancouver in November 2011 and was published by Winnipeg’s Scirocco Drama in April 2012.
He is currently Artistic Producer of Screaming Weenie Productions, Western Canada’s professional Queer theatre company.
cegatchalian.com
Charlie Spats
21-year-old Charlie Spats has established a career for himself simply out of being a fanboy of queer pornography and sexual health. In the past two years, Spats has completed an internship with Vancouver’s Good Dyke Porn, been featured on a variety of queer porn websites, performed at Diva’s Den and Toronto’s Switch play party, and been one of only three transmen to ever walk the red carpet of the AVN Awards.
Charlie collaborated with Winnipeg’s Cherrystems.com to create an exclusive networking site specifically for queer Canadians within the porn industry. Currently, Spats is hard at work producing the quarterly all-genders bathhouse event sTeam and assembling content for his own upcoming community-focused porn site.
charliespats.com
So, I write for money. I string words together for cash. I also type for joy. I refuse to admit that I’m procrastinating a novel.
I worked as Xtra West newspaper’s monthly queer and kinky sex columnist 2002 – 2006. I wrote several full length feature articles on sexuality during that time, plus other articles and columns.
Hiromi Goto
Reading in Queerotica, August 7, 2012.
Hiromi’s first novel, Chorus of Mushrooms (1994), received the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best First Book in the Caribbean and Canada region and was co-winner of the Canada-Japan Book Award. Her short stories and poetry have been widely published in literary journals and anthologies. Her second novel,The Kappa Child (2001), was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Regional Book, and was awarded the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award. Her first children’s novel, The Water of Possibility, was also published that year. Hopeful Monsters, a collection of short stories, was released in 2004.
Jan Derbyshire is a performer, playwright, theatre maker, director, teacher, and comedian. Her work involves solo performance, community and artist collaboration, traditional playwriting, experimental storytelling, video, words on paper, event creation, and stand-up comedy.
Her plays have been produced locally, nationally, and internationally appearing at such festivals as 2010 Cultural Olympiad, Women in View, Summerworks, Rhubarb and the Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival. Plays have been produced at Buddies in Bad Times (Toronto), The Belfry (Victoria), The Great Canadian Theatre Company (Ottawa). and with Solo Collective in Vancouver and Quest Theatre in Calgary.
Plays include Dog of My Understanding, Audition of The Embarrassed Woman, The Opposite of Everything is True, Under The Big Top and A Modern Woman’s Guide to Female Impersonation, to name a few. She has been Artist in Residence with The National Film Board of Canada, the Firehall Arts Centre and Montreal’s Playwright’s Centre. Currently she is an Artistic Associate with PTC (Playwright’s Theatre Centre) and Screaming Weenies Theatre in Vancouver. She has performed stand-up comedy on A&E, CBC, CTV. Her film Sanity for Beginners can be seen at this years Out on Screen. Festival. Recent recipient of the Remarkable Women Award 2012- The City of Vancouver.
janderbyshire.com
Kate Bornstein
Kate Bornstein is a performance artist, college & high school lecturer, and advocate for teens, freaks, and other outlaws. After six years in the writing, her new memoir is now available: A Queer and Pleasant Danger: The true story of a nice Jewish boy who joins the Church of Scientology and leaves twelve years later to become the lovely lady she is today.
Leslie UyedaComposer of When the Sun Comes Out August 2
Leslie Uyeda was born in Montreal, and is a composer, conductor and pianist. She is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre. Uyeda’s many songs and song cycles have been performed by Heather Pawsey, Martha Guth, Erika Switzer, Robyn Driedger-Klassen, Terence Dawson, Wendy Nielsen, Rena Sharon, Kathryn Cernauskas, Ari Barnes, and Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa. Her choral music has been commissioned and performed by musica intima, chor leoni, the Phoenix Chamber Choir, and the Elektra Women’s Choir. Premieres in 2011 have included new songs for soprano Heather Pawsey, and baritone Doug MacNaughton. She has also composed song cycles for mezzo-soprano Jean Stilwell, and baritone Brett Polegato. Uyeda’s vocal and instrumental music is heard throughout Canada and the U.S.
Born in Vancouver, Canada, Rachel Rose holds dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship. She grew up on Hornby Island, in Vancouver’s Chinatown on Princess Street, in Anacortes, WA, and Seattle, and has also lived in Montreal and Maebashi, Japan. Her work has appeared in various journals in both countries, including The Malahat Review, Verse, Arc, Black Warrior Review, Poetry and The Best American Poetry.
Her first book, Giving My Body to Science, (McGill/Queen’s University Press) was a finalist for The Gerald Lampert Award, The Pat Lowther Award, and the Grand Prix du Livre de Montreal, and won the Quebec Writers’ Federation A.M. Klein Award. Her second book, Notes on Arrival and Departure, was published by McClelland & Stewart in 2005.
She holds a BA in English from McGill University and a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Two essays appeared in anthologies about mothering in 2008, in Between Interruptions: 30 Women Tell the Truth About Motherhood, and in Double Lives. Other work has been anthologized in Uncharted Lines: Poems from the Journal of the American Medical Association, White Ink: Poems on Mothers and Motherhood, In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry, Rocksalt, Open Wide a Wilderness, and Letters to the World. Rachel is the poetry and lyric prose mentor at Simon Fraser University’s The Writers Studio.
rachelrose.ca
Composer of instrumental contemporary concert music, Simon Martin graduated from the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal (2006). Finalist for the Jules Léger Prize (2008), his music has been performed throughout Canada, in the United States and in many countries across Europe as well as broadcast by CBC Radio 2 and Espace musique.
Tony Correia wrote for Xtra in Vancouver from 2005-2011, starting with the column “Queen’s Logic” and finishing with the serial, Foodsluts at Doll & Penny’s Café. His articles and essays have appeared in the Globe & Mail, SubTerrain, SAD magazine and The Vancouver Review, as well as the anthologies, I Like it Like That and Second Person Queer. Foodsluts at Doll & Penny’s Cafe is Tony’s first book and can be purchased at Little Sisters.
Queer Arts Festival proudly presented by the Pride In Art Society. 