Veteran political humorist Kate Clinton examines the uses of humor in social movements from her particular point of view and practice as a lesbian feminist humorist performing for twenty years. Her “standup” lecture also reviews theories of contemporary comedy, debunks the premature report of the death of irony, and reveals the secret human longing for the wild ride of smart, challenging humor. Her most recent book, What the L?, looks at life under W in the USA.
http://kateclinton.com
View a Video of this speaker.
More on this speaker. (PDF 159)

As founder of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, he has collected thousands of panels representing individual lives lost to the disease. Jones offers an eye-opening and heart-felt presentation on how this epidemic impacts victims' friends, families and communities across America and around the world. His autobiography is Stitching a Revolution: The Making of an Activist.
More on this speaker. (PDF 256K)

Proclaimed as “one of the finest writers of her generation” by the Boston Globe, her first novel, Bastard Out of Carolina, was one of five finalists for the National Book Award, and won both the Ferro Grumley and Bay Area Book Reviewers Awards for fiction. Her second novel, Cavedweller, was a New York Times bestseller.

As Washington DC Bureau Chief for The Detroit News, Deb Price writes the first weekly column on gay issues in a mainstream newspaper. The pioneering column – instantly recognized as a landmark in journalism – for the first time brought a gay voice regularly into newspaper households. While news organizations have increased coverage of gay and lesbian issues in recent years, Price promised to offer readers something unique: life from a gay perspective. Her column is now syndicated and read across America.

Cheryl Ann Costa wears many hats: she is a security engineer, a practicing Buddhist, a theater producer, a playwright and a trans-woman. Costa crossed the boundary of gender when she transitioned from male to female in the mid nineteen-eighties. In her presentation she discusses the differences between “Sex” and “Gender” and her personal journey through life with courage, conviction, and healthy dose of humor.

Award-winning author and journalist Neil Miller looks at the changing lives of gays and lesbians in small communities across the United States and around the globe in his acclaimed books In Search of Gay America and Out in the World. His most recent book, Sex-Crime Panic: A Journey to the Paranoid Heart of the 1950's, shows the dark chapter in history where the personal lives of gay men in America's heartland were destroyed.

In his workshops and multi-media presentations, “Gay, Greek and Proud,” Leif Mitchell shares his personal triumph of being out in a college fraternity. He draws on his experience and knowledge of gay and lesbian issues as they relate to students to provide audiences with concrete ways to make their fraternities and sororities more inclusive of gay, lesbian and bisexual people.

Richard Mohr has written on social issues affecting gay and lesbian Americans. One of the country's leading advocates for lesbian and gay marriage, his essay "Gay Basics" has been anthologized over thirty times. Richard is the author of Gays/Justice: A Study of Ethics, Society, and Law; Gay Ideas: Outing and Other Controversies; A More Perfect Union; and The Long Arc of Justice: Lesbian and Gay Marriage, Equality, and Rights.

Vaid is an attorney and community organizer, and the author of the award-winning analysis of the gay rights movement entitled Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay & Lesbian Liberation. Formerly Director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force's Policy Institute, she remains committed to community-based change through strategic thinking and coalition building.