Meet the Narrators

Christy Cameron is a writer and performer based in Toronto. During the 1990s, Cameron produced Dirty Babette, a series of cabarets that featured abrasive, class critical, sexually loaded performance in self-funded venues, with an emphasis on dyke-core reading-rants and media art, transgender performance, pseudo-sex shows, and audience dress-up. Cameron’s work has been published and staged widely, and includes the legendary Legionella’s Manifesto, first performed by Cameron at Dirty Babette’s "Strange Attractor” in 1997.

DJ, model, actor, musician, and performance artist, Sheila Chevalier is best-known as the host/producer of Packin Attitude, a weekly radio show on popular college station CKLN 88.1 FM. Through the '90s to the '10s, episodes gave listeners music, art, culture, and live interviews though her singular lens that was women-fronted, queer-, trans-, and sex-positive. Alongside curating, DJing and hosting events throughout queer Toronto, she was a member of the board of CKLN, Board Co-chair and Allocations Committee Chair of the Lesbian and Gay Community Appeal Foundation (LGCA, now Community One Foundation), and the Special Events Committee of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, orchestrating legendary BIBT Dungeon fundraising events. Sheila is currently whipping cancer’s ass while continuing to work for queer rights and visibility in everything she does, most recently within the health and medical fields.

Farzana Doctor is a Tkaronto-based author, activist and psychotherapist. She’s written five critically acclaimed lit-fic novels, Stealing Nasreen, Six Metres of Pavement, All Inclusive, Seven and The Beauty of Us, as well as a poetry collection, You Still Look The Same and a self- and community care workbook for helpers and activists, 52 Weeks to a Sweeter Life. 

In 2023, Farzana received the prestigious Freedom To Read Award. In 2020, Seven was chosen as an Amnesty International Book Club’s Reader’s Choice Pick and was shortlisted for the Trillium and Evergreen awards. Six Metres of Pavement won the Lambda and Writers’ Trust Dayne Oglivie prizes and was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award in 2012.

Learn more at  www.Linktr.ee/farzanadoctor     

Dr. OmiSoore H. Dryden (she/her) is a Black queer femme scholar whose work is grounded in care, embodiment, and refusal. Born in Jamaica and shaped by Caribbean and Canadian diasporic life, she brings Black femme knowledge, memory, and pleasure into her scholarship. She is a Full Professor at Dalhousie University and holds the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair (CIHR) in Black Health Studies. Her research centres Black queer, trans, and gender-diverse communities, examining how anti-Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia shape health systems, data governance, and blood donation policy. Through community-led, justice-oriented work, she insists on Black life, intimacy, and collective liberation as sites of knowledge.

Monica Forrester (she/they) is a 2Spirit Trans Women of colour, activist, community leader, sex worker, and parent. For 27 years she has been working in community services to bring awareness to the lives of racialized and marginalized Trans and 2Spirit folks that may be sex workers, under-housed, unemployed, use substances, and are experiencing systemic and societal violence. Monica is the Executive Director and founder of Trans Pride Toronto. She formerly worked at The 519, where she contributed to Trans Programming and was the outreach worker for the Trans Sex Worker Outreach Programme, and has worked as Manager for Indigenous Outreach and Programs at Maggie's Toronto Sex Workers Action Project for 25 years.

Chanelle Gallant is an abolitionist feminist who has been fighting to free women’s sexuality from criminalization for over 25 years. She is a frontline organizer, writer, thinker, strategist and the co-author of Not Your Rescue Project: Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Justice. Chanelle has contributed to dozens of influential publications including Pleasure Activism and Abolish Social Work (As We Know It). She cut her teeth as a core organizer in the historic fight to defend the Pussy Palace and and has since helped to found or develop numerous sex work and racial justice organizations including the Migrant Sex Workers Project and SURJ-Toronto. 

Nancy Irwin(she/her) is a rebel femme who occasionally fights for justice. A biker, SM activist, world traveller, handy-dyke… play party organizer who spent 13 years custom making latex clothing for all genders as Naughty Nancy. She has published incriminating articles in the queer and kinky press as well as 25 years of inspiring stories in the straight biker press. She is a switch who plays well with all genders - still taboo! An adventurous street biker who loves the dirt and twisty mountain roads, she makes a living in green spaces. And she’s always hunting fun playmates!

May Lui (she/her) is a settler/immigrant of Chinese and white/ European/Jewish ancestry who lives in T’karonto. May is a published writer, educator and consultant. She has a Master of Education from University of Toronto/OISE in Adult Education, anti-oppression and anti-racism education. May worked in the non-profit sector for many years and has been a freelance consultant for over 25 years teaching adults in the workplace about understanding and dismantling oppression and privilege in individuals, institutions and systems. She is a feminist, an anti-racist activist, and supporter of liberation struggles and colonial resistance. Her website is maylui.com.

Allyson Mitchell’s individual and collaborative practice spans sculpture, performance, installation, and film, engaging feminist and queer politics through humour, excess, and critique. Her work has generated projects such as the fat activist collective Pretty Porky and Pissed Off, a coven of lesbian feminist Sasquatch monsters, a room-sized Vagina Dentata, and Killjoy’s Kastle: A Lesbian Feminist Haunted House, presented internationally with collaborator Deirdre Logue. Together, Mitchell and Logue run FAR Feminist Artist Residency in rural Ontario. Mitchell is a Professor in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at York University and publishes graphic memoir comics on Substack @ I May Never Answer Your Email and This Is Why.

Kathryn Payne is an army brat who grew up in many different parts of Canada, including her family’s farm in Ontario. She is a bi prof, a retired ho, a doting aunty and optimistic gardener. She wrote her first poem at 11, published a book of poetry at 28, and teaches labour studies and queer studies at George Brown College and Iyengar yoga on Zoom. Besides her book of poems—Longing At Least Is Constant—Kathryn has had pieces published in a number of anthologies and collections including What I Love About Being Queer, Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity, and Bent on Writing: Contemporary Queer Tales. She’s been an imperfect activist in the movements for queer rights, sex worker rights, and labour rights. She lives, gardens, cycles, and protests in Toronto, but dreams of woods, water, and an end to colonialism and capitalism.

Mirha-Soleil Ross is a legendary trans activits and performer. She was the editor of Gendertrash From Hell, the organizer of the first-ever trans film festival, Counting Past Two, and the creator of multiple one-woman performances, including Yapping Out Loud: Confessions of an Unrepentant Whore. Her work since the early 1990s in Montreal and Toronto has focused on transsexual rights, access to resources, advocacy for sex workers, and animal rights.

Elizabeth Ruth is a Toronto writer. Her novels are: Semi-Detached, Matadora, Smoke, and Ten Good Seconds of Silence. Her work has been recognized by the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, City of Toronto Book Award, Amazon.ca Best First Novel Award, One Book One Community, and CanadaReads. CBC named her “One of the Ten Canadian Women Writers You Must Read.” Elizabeth’s debut poetry collection is entitled, This Report Is Strictly Confidential. Elizabeth is also the author of a plain language novella for adult literary learners, Love You To Death, and the editor of an anthology, Bent On Writing: contemporary queer tales. The anthology was a showcase of some work shared at the long-running queer literary series she founded and curated, Clit Lit. Elizabeth is known for her mentorship of aspiring writers. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto.

Trish Salah is an Arab Canadian poet, scholar, and activist. In the early 1990s, she was active in the Montreal small press and spoken word scene before relocating to Toronto, where she participated in Mirha-Soleil Ross’ Counting Past 2: Performance/Film/Video/Spoken Word with Transsexual Nerve, among other arts and activist projects. Her first book, Wanting in Arabic (TSAR 2002), was published at a time when poetry collections by trans women were difficult to come by and the 2013 reissue won a Lambda Literary Award. Salah is also the author of Lyric Sexology Vol. 1 (Roof 2014, Metonymy 2017) and co-editor of special issues of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, and Arc Poetry Magazine. An associate professor of Gender Studies at Queen’s University, she teaches at the intersections of trans/queer, psychoanalytic, diaspora, and anti-colonial poetics, creative writing, and theory.

Abi Slone is a world traveller, fine femme and a woman who believes in the power of fashion. A writer, editor and appreciator of a good story, she has had the good fortune of being surrounded by beautiful people, places and things.

For Carol Thames, coming out as a Queer, Black woman was an act of activism and resistance. Carol has been an advocate for equity and liberation—from her first queer production, poetry, publications to advocating for equity regarding anti-Black racism, and for Queer liberation and rights. Carol has organized events that have created safe spaces within the Queer community. Her education includes two post-graduate degrees. Carol has immersed herself—both in professional and volunteer capacities—in numerous not-for-profit, community agencies since the early 1990s.

Ms. Jamea Zuberi has been an educator, curriculum writer, and award recipient for over 30 years. She completed a M.Ed, B.Sc, and B.Ed at York University in Toronto, Canada, where she was awarded the Dean's Award for Outstanding Student. In 2022, she was named one of the 100 Accomplished Black Canadian Women Honourees, a recognition she holds with pride.

She is particularly proud of her more than three decades of engaging, educating, and leading young people in community work, with a deep focus on her beloved Jane and Finch community. Her equity, inclusion, and anti-oppression work in education began at The Linden School for Girls—Canada’s first feminist girls’ school—and continues today at the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), where she leads the African Heritage Committee with an anti-Black racism and multi-centric lens. Most notably, she founded and leads the Black Students Alliance across the TDSB, a groundbreaking initiative that amplifies student voice, fosters leadership, and builds community across schools.

Her contributions have been recognized with numerous awards, including the Harmony Movement Be the Change Educator Award (2011). Ms. Zuberi is also credited as the founder of Blockorama, which after 27 years remains the only Black stage at the 2SLGBTTIQQ+ Pride Toronto Festival, and the founder of the first Masquerade Band—Pelau MasQueerade—in the Pride Toronto Parade. In 2007, she received the David Miller Mayor Volunteer Appreciation Award from the City of Toronto for her community involvement with LGBTTI2Q youth groups.