Petra Kuppers, Writer Ypsilanti, MI www.olimpias.org Petra Kuppers is a disability culture activist, a community performance artist, and a Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She also teaches on the LowResidency MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College, is the Artistic Director of an international disability performance collective, The Olimpias, and has led horror and dark fantasy writing circles in Wales and the US since the 1990s. Petra uses somatic and speculative writing as well as performance practice to engage audiences toward more socially just and enjoyable futures. She has written academic books on disability arts and culture, medicine and performance, and community performance. Her most recent poetry collection is PearlStitch (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016) and the chapbook Green Orion Woman (dancing girl, 2018). Her book of speculative short stories, Ice Bar, appeared in 2018. She lives with her partner, poet and dancer Stephanie Heit, in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where they co-create Turtle Disco, a community arts space.‌‌...
Karen LeCocq, Artist Mariposa, CA www.karenlecocq.com Professional artist and lecturer, Karen LeCocq is a mixed media sculptor who has shown nationally and internationally in galleries as well as major museums, among them: The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, The Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA. Her work has gained international recognition through its use in the Absolut Vodka Signature Artist campaign. Her work has been pictured in numerous publications, among them: Art In America, Art News, Artforum, Art and Antiques, Manhatten Arts, and Time Magazine and has been reproduced in the books The Power of Feminist Art, Sexual Politics, The Absolut Book, California Artists, Through the Flower, By Our Own Hands, and in her autobiography, The Easiest Thing To Remember.
Berette Macaulay, Writer Everett, WA www.BeretteMacaulay.com Berette Macaulay is an artist, scholar, and writer who produces contemplative, investigative, and responsive work as cultural inquiry and criticism in prose, poetry, and in photo-based projects. Her research interests are in community (in)visibility, social justice activism, and global black memory and empowerment, often borne of her own transcultural auto-biographical histories. Berette is troubled by social labels and normalized definitions of class, gender, identity, mythology, love, race, spirituality, technology, and any form of misrepresentation, abuse of power, or privileging that happens within these social systems. Her work has been exhibited and published within the US and abroad. She is currently pursuing her MA at University of Washington. 129