MySpace - Sins Invalid - 101 - Female - SAN FRANCISCO, California

Sins Invalid's Artistic Core

ELAINE BEALE is a writer. Her first novel, Murder in the Castro, was published in 1997. Her second novel, Another Life Altogether, is forthcoming from Speigel & Grau, a division of Random House. In 2007 she was selected as the winner of a California statewide fiction contest held by Poets and Writers and she was one of three finalists for the 2007 Penelope Niven Creation Nonfiction Award (Center for Women Writers, National Literary Awards). Elaine has a graduate degree in Education from the University of London (UK), and is a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing candidate at the University of British Columbia. Elaine teaches creative writing to adults and has also taught as a resident artist in Richmond public schools. Previously, she developed and taught a creative writing program for survivors of sexual assault through San Francisco Women Against Rape; the program was funded for several years by the San Francisco Arts Commission. She worked in the nonprofit field for almost 20 years where she directed programs combating domestic violence and anti-LGBT hate crimes, and later worked in the fundraising field as an independent consultant. She has raised more than $25 million to support nonprofit and community organizations in the Bay Area and trained individuals in fundraising at CompassPoint, the Foundation Center, Dominican University, and Cal State, East Bay. She is a former board member of Survivors International and is currently a board member of the International Media Project. Elaine lives in Oakland, California with her partner of 14 years. Visit her blog at www.elainebeale.wordpress.com
photo of Patty Berne

PATTY BERNE is a Co-Founder and Director of Sins Invalid. Berne's background includes advocacy for immigrants who seek asylum due to war and torture; community organizing within the Haitian diaspora; international support work for the Guatemalan democratic movement; work with incarcerated youth toward alternatives to the criminal legal system; advocating for LGBTQI community and disability rights perspectives within the field of reproductive and genetic technologies; offering mental health support to survivors of violence; and cultural activism to centralize marginalized voices, particularly those of people with disabilities. She is pursuing a Psy.D., focusing on trauma and healing for survivors of interpersonal and state-sponsored violence. In 2008, she had a chapter published in the Routledge Press book, Telling Stories to Change the World, on the work and history of Sins Invalid. She currently chairs the Board of Directors at San Francisco Women Against Rape and is the 2009 recipient of the Empress I Jose Sarria Award for Uncommon Leadership in the field of LGBTQI and disability rights by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

VANESSA HUANG is a poet, writer, filmmaker, cellist, community organizer, and consultant who has worked to integrate cultural work, digital/social media, and fundraising with communications strategy to support campaigns, leadership development, and movement building from the margins. Vanessa brings a history of collaboration across the prison industrial complex abolition, gender liberation, reproductive justice, anti-violence, and immigrant rights movements. Vanessa is a founding member and core organizer with Transforming Justice, part of generationFIVE's program team, a grantwriter for the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, and a member of the shifting narratives film collective. Previously, Vanessa organized people in and outside of women's prisons to challenge prison expansion as Justice Now's campaign and communications director and wrote a news column for ColorLines magazine about the war on terror's impact on communities of color.

NOMY LAMM is a writer, musician, and activist whose work has been featured in magazines (Ms., Punk Planet, Make/Shift), anthologies (Listen Up, Body Outlaws, and most recently Word Warriors and Working Sex, all on Seal Press), and onstage across the US. She has toured with Sister Spit, the Sex Workers Art Show, and the cabaret showcase Dr. Frockrocket's Menagerie and Medicine Show. She has released two solo albums (Anthem, 1999, and Effigy, 2002) and co-wrote, co-produced, and performed in The Transfused, a post-apocalyptic rock opera about multigendered animal-human hybrids, in 2000. She teaches voice lessons, and is currently working on her first novel, The Best Part Comes After the End

LEROY FRANKLIN MOORE JR. is a Co-Founder and Community Relations Director of Sins Invalid. As a Black writer, poet, hip-hop/music lover, community activist, feminist and consultant on race and disability with a physical disability, he has been sharing his perspectives on identity, race, and disability for the last 13 years. His work began in London, England where he discovered a Black disabled movement which led to the creation of his lecture series, "On the Outskirts: Race & Disability". He is also producer and columnist of Illin-N-Chillin at Poor Magazine and creator of Krip-Hop Mixtape Project. He is one of the leading voices around police brutality and wrongful incarceration of people with disabilities and has studied, worked, and lectured in the field of race and disability concerning blues, hip-hop, and social justice issues in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and the Netherlands.

Program Staff

RALPH DICKINSON, Assistant Managing Director, is a queer artist and producer and a long time Bay Area resident. He has worked as a Community Health Outreach Worker at New Leaf and Haight Ashbury Free Clinics, a volunteer for Health Care for the Homeless and the Berkeley Free Clinic, and a video production educator at Bay Area Video Coalition, San Francisco State University and Washington Primary School, to name a few. He recently survived a year long stint as a producer working in post production in Los Angeles and is happy to be back in the Bay Area working with socially conscious organizations like Sins Invalid. His website is www.ralphdickinson.com

Advisors

TODD HERMAN, Project Advisor, is a filmmaker, photographer, and co-founder of Sins Invalid. His film and photographic works, often exploring relationships between documentary images and poetic texts, range from a newly released photography book about several marginalized communities in Kathmandu, Nepal; to film and book projects exploring the connections between birth, memory and mourning; to video productions and visual art exhibitions exploring aspects of disability, sexuality and eugenics. He was the recipient of the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery’s 2004 Emerging Curator Award, and was the 2008 winner of the 51st Annual San Francisco International Film Festival Golden Gate Award for best bay area short film. Todd has facilitated filmmaking workshops for adults with disabilities for nearly ten years. He exhibits his work internationally. For more information, visit www.todd-herman.com