Imagine How Free We Can Get: Walking Tour

Biographies

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-SamarasinhaLeah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer Sri Lankan writer, performer and teacher. She is the 2009-10 Artist in Residence at UC Berkeley’s June Jordan’s Poetry for the People and the co-founder and co-artistic director of Mangos With Chili, North America’s only touring cabaret of queer and trans people of color performing artists.  The author of Consensual Genocide, her writing has appeared in the anthologies Yes Means Yes, Visible: A Femmethology, Homelands, Colonize This, We Don’t Need Another Wave, Bitchfest, Without a Net, Dangerous Families, Brazen Femme, Femme and A Girl’s Guide to Taking Over The World. The Revolution Starts At Home: Transforming Abuse Through Community Accountability, which she co-edited with Ching-In Chen and Jai Dulani, will be published by South End Press in winter 2011. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College and has been the Events Coordinator of Modern Times Books since September 2009..

Lex Non Scripta is a working class artist turned small business owner and founder/curatorial director for Aorta Magazine. Having been an active participant, consumer, and creator of self-published media, zines, and projects since the mid-90s, Lex has a vested interest in creating an accessible forum for artists, writers, and the community to interact and refuses to believe that the printed word is a thing of the past. In addition to exhibiting art whenever possible, Lex has curated a number of showcases for artists and musicians, worked extensively with community-run non-profit arts organizations, and maintains an active commitment to political organizing in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Lex holds a BFA in Illustration and Design from Columbia College Chicago, works as a freelance artist, and lives amongst an amazing and inspiring community of people in San Francisco.