Meg Foley is a queer dance artist, educator, and parent who creates performances and somatic-based events as self-affirming practices. She currently researches gay and trans families and how we are formed. Her improvisational practice builds detailed movement vocabularies out of scientifically-engaged research and lived experience. Artistic collaborations include co-curating Tender Hotel, a 24-hour virtual hotel hosting rooms facilitated by 100+ international artists within Art Station Foundation’s and CounterPulse’s Grand reUnion, and a National Center for Choreography Akron Dancing Lab exploring how artistic and parenting practices overlap with fellow artist parents. She grew up in the DC area, was a creative movement baby who grew up to do a lot of club dancing, studied visual art and dance, and now is a queerdo mama, based in Philadelphia.

Rabbit aL Friedrich (they/them) engages with inquiries of site, material integrity, and environmental impact. Rabbit has worked at Huntington Botanical Gardens, La Fábrica de Arte Cubano (Havana), Centro Cultural Español Miami, the Movement Center for Art & Social Justice (Kampala, Uganda), in escape rooms, parking lots, an airport, and the chapel of a decommissioned convalescent home. Currently making miniatures in conversation with grief and designing rituals/practices of embodying queer ecologies, they live in Portland, OR, and hold an MFA from California Institute of the Arts.

Carmichael Jones works in installation, sculpture, film, photography and performative objects to upend parameters of the encounter and orientation. Their work addresses political concerns of communication and the structure of seeing and being seen and mirrors the bodily aspect of viewing through material and spatial contradictions, emphasizing edges or the periphery and exposing the nuances of encountering to queer the act of art-viewing. Philadelphia-based, they hold an MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Valerie Oliveiro is a dance and performance maker based in the Twin Cities and from Singapore. While they currently engage movement as their primary motor for expression, they also engage in other expressions, such as design, writing, drawing and photography, as generative, complexly relational proposals. Currently, they are a Co-Artistic Director at Red Eye Theater, ensemble member at Lighting Rod (QTBIPOC-led performance organism) and co-run a small performance incubator, MOVO SPACE. A 2023-24 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, Valerie’s current research excavates notions, realities and imaginations of vastness. They maintain a long-term creative practice with Jennifer Monson.

Sylvan Oswald is an interdisciplinary artist originally from Philadelphia who creates plays, texts, publications, and video. His work uses metatheatricality and formal irreverence to explore queer and trans identity. Recent projects include the theatrical essay Trainers and the performance text High Winds, based on the book of the same name he co-authored with graphic designer Jessica Fleischmann. Sylvan’s lo-fi semi-improvised web series Outtakes starring Becca Blackwell and Zuzanna Szadkowski is hosted at weareopentv.com. Honors include a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rosati Fellowship from Duke University Libraries, the Thom Thomas award from The Dramatists Guild, a Jerome Fellowship, and residencies at Sundance/Ucross, Macdowell Colony, and Yaddo.

Michèle Steinwald is a feminist, DIY, artist-centered, community-driven, cultural organizer. Committed to social justice in the arts, she has researched and facilitated original sessions at conferences and professional gatherings; been an artist mentor for Creative Capital’s retreat and Arts Midwest’s ArtsLab; managed projects for DanceUSA and NEFA/National Dance Project;  and worked as a performance curator. Although Canadian, Steinwald currently works in the US as an independent curator, community organizer, and writer.

The Queer Parents Convenings were conceived of in collaboration with co-facilitators Pati Garcia, Paloma N. Irizarry, Darcelle Lewis, and Michèle Steinwald and with manager Linnea deRoche. 

• Pati Garcia is a queer latinx certified Sexological Bodyworker and Certified Professional Midwife. Pati has been involved in revolutionary somatic approaches to feminist body autonomy cultivation from a latinx gender non conforming perspective since 2004.
• Paloma N Irizarry is a Boricua birthworker, performer, creator, and facilitator who feels at home in the unknown and collective problem-solving based in Philadelphia. 
• Darcelle Lewis is a queer and non-binary feminist and mental health activist from Trinidad & Tobago.
• Michèle Steinwald is a Canadian, feminist, DIY, artist-centered, pseudo-forensic, embodied, community-driven, cultural organizer working in the US. (longer bio above)
• Linnea Carlson deRoche is a Philadelphia-based queer parent, educator, theater artist, and project manager. With a Masters in Education, they have developed alternative educational experiences for children and queer youth, including organizing and leading travel abroad trips and creating curriculum for kids for 15+ years. They co-direct School Free Players, a youth theater company performing original plays, often using Theatre of the Oppressed and devised theater exercises as the framework for creation and liberation work.