Booking for 2010
Hi friends,
I'm currently booking performances, writing workshops, and activist/educational workshops at universities, nonprofits and community organizations for spring and fall/winter 2010. If you would like to bring me, or can pass this email on to someone who you think might like to bring me, I would super appreciate it! Please get in touch with me via brownstargirl@gmail.com.
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About me:
I'm a widely-published writer, and a seasoned performer, activist, and writing teacher. I've performed and taught at a wide range of universities and community spaces over the past decade. Some of my most recent performances have been performing and teaching a writing intensive as the 2009 Bent Mentor at Seattle's Bent LGBT Writing Institute, performing my one-woman show at Reed College and the University of Oregon at Eugene, and being a keynote performer at Swarthmore College's Asian American Heritage Month. I teach at UC Berkeley's June Jordan's Poetry For the People program and am teaching writing workshops as part of Communities United Against Violence's annual Safetyfest. I am available to perform spoken word and/or my one-woman show, as well as teaching creative writing intensive workshops. My work is focused around issues of queer and trans people of color, young woman of color feminism, abuse and violence, South Asia/Sri Lankan diaspora, and/or disability, but is accessible and useful to people from many different communities and identities.
Long official bio:
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a Worcester raised, Toronto matured, Oakland-based queer Sri Lankan writer, performer and teacher. She is the 2009-10 Artist in Residence and part-time professor at UC Berkeley's June Jordan's Poetry for the People and the co-founder and co-artistic director of Mangos With Chili, North America's only touring cabaret of queer and trans people of color performing artists. She is a 2009 commissioned performer with Sins Invalid, the national performance organization of queer people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. Her one woman show, Grown Woman Show, has toured nationally, including performances at the National Queer Arts Festival, Swarthmore College, Yale University, Reed College and McGill University. The author of Consensual Genocide, her writing has appeared in the anthologies Yes Means Yes, Visible: A Femmethology, Homelands, Colonize This, We Don't Need Another Wave, Bitchfest, Without a Net, Dangerous Families, Brazen Femme, Femme and A Girl's Guide to Taking Over The World. She is finishing her second book of poetry, Love Cake, and her first memoir, Dirty River and is happy about the forthcoming publication of The Revolution Starts At Home: Transforming Abuse Through Community Accountability, which she co-edited with Ching-In Chen and Jai Dulani, by South End Press in 2010. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, focusing on creative nonfiction and community-based teaching by writers of color.
Performance:
Poetry and performance: I'm available to do a one-hour (or shorter) set of spoken word performance.
One-woman show:
Grown Woman Show is Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's fearless, sexy and powerful one-woman show about being a long-term incest survivor and a queer woman of color negotiating love, family and heartbreak. In Grown Woman Show, Leah traces one year in her life as she leaves her long-term white partner and returns to finding love and trouble in a series of new lovers of color- while simultaneously attempting to reconnect with the family she hasn’t talked to in a decade. Blending hilarious and heartbreaking storytelling, performance poetry and South Asian ritual, Grown Woman Show explores the ways in which we heal from sexual abuse and transform legacies of violence in our lives, and the ways in which queer people of color love at high stakes. Grown Woman Show examines delicate butch/femme inter-community dynamics and the complexities of walking towards justice and accountability with a family that is both loving and violent. In the tradition of Dorothy Allison's Two or Three Things I Know For Sure, Grown Woman Show asks: What do we do with the violence we've survived once we're grown?
Time: 60 minutes
Tech needs: Analog or digital slide projector, projection surface, raised stage, light and sound board. Works well in small to medium theater/performance spaces
Target audience: LGBTIQ, survivors of violence, women of color.
Fits well with: Take Back the Night, Love Your Body Month, Pride, International Women's Day.
Workshops:
Secrets, stories, scars, survival: Writing your dirty laundry and living to tell.
Length: 2- 3 hours, customizable.
Teaching Artist: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Writing and telling our stories is an important part of surviving violence for many folks who've lived through it. But when we sit down to write down our stories, the process often feels more complicated and treacherous than we thought it would be. How do we write about trauma when we freeze every time we try? How much do we tell, and where? What the line between writing for therapy and writing for performance? How do we risk telling complicated stories of violence and survival within our communities that we worry will be misunderstood? And how do we do all of this without everyone including ourselves getting triggered?
In this workshop, we'll talk about ways to create safety to write and speak; look at examples of diverse ways writers have chosen to write about violence and abuse and everything that comes after; do some somatic body exercises to create safety and embodiment while we write; and do some writing and performance exercises!
Story Keeper: Writing and Performance for women of color and or LGBTI people of color.
Length: 2-3 hours, customizable
As people of color and/or queer and trans people of color, we have a lot of fabulous stories- love affairs, survival stories, running away at 14, being the only queer Sri Lankan femme in our industrial New England town. Most of our important stories are community secrets, dirty laundry, and the stories our families or lovers whisper, then say they’ll kills us if we tell. Our role as artists and cultural workers is to be the holder and teller of stories. In this workshop, you’ll have the chance to think about how to tell them. . We’ll talk about issues of disclosure and safety (ie, how to do all this without your friends and family killing you,) read and listen to amazing work by queer and trans artists of color who’ve walked this road, do some writing exercises and talk about all the millions of ways there are of documenting our amazing lives and just how important it is to do so.
Needs: Butcher paper, pens, post it notes, bowl.
The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting and Dealing with intimate violence in activist, queer, people of color and other small communities
Partner abuse within queer, politicized communities is a dirty secret and a difficult issue to deal with. Many people face complicated choices in dealing with abusive partners, from hesitancy about using the criminal justice system because of racism and homo and transphobia to the difficulty of dealing with community disbelief when our abuser is a beloved figure within our queer, trans, people of color or other activist community. In this workshop, we'll talk about the nitty-gritty issues of partner abuse/ domestic violence within our communities and discuss community accountability strategies that can help us walk towards building accountability, justice and violence free zones in our lives.
Length: 2-3 hours
I'm also available to
Needs: Butcher paper, pens, private space.
Some notes about my workshops:
Pre-registration is good. The top end for the number of folks I can teach on my own is about 20, though I'm open to figuring out workshops that are open to more. 30 is my absolute limit.
Water, a flip chart and pens/ paper are great things to have on hand. Snacks are good too.
If I need to copy materials for the workshop, it's easier, if possible, if I can get them to you to be copied prior to the event- let me know if you can do this.
Please ensure that the workshops and performances are held in wheelchair accessible space. Ask participants to refrain from wearing scented products in order to make the performance accessible to people with environmental illness and chemical sensitivities. If you can, offer childcare- just ask folks who need it to preregister, and get volunteers to hang with the kids. Please make sure the space is open to all-ages.
I'm currently booking performances, writing workshops, and activist/educational workshops at universities, nonprofits and community organizations for spring and fall/winter 2010. If you would like to bring me, or can pass this email on to someone who you think might like to bring me, I would super appreciate it! Please get in touch with me via brownstargirl@gmail.com.
----
About me:
I'm a widely-published writer, and a seasoned performer, activist, and writing teacher. I've performed and taught at a wide range of universities and community spaces over the past decade. Some of my most recent performances have been performing and teaching a writing intensive as the 2009 Bent Mentor at Seattle's Bent LGBT Writing Institute, performing my one-woman show at Reed College and the University of Oregon at Eugene, and being a keynote performer at Swarthmore College's Asian American Heritage Month. I teach at UC Berkeley's June Jordan's Poetry For the People program and am teaching writing workshops as part of Communities United Against Violence's annual Safetyfest. I am available to perform spoken word and/or my one-woman show, as well as teaching creative writing intensive workshops. My work is focused around issues of queer and trans people of color, young woman of color feminism, abuse and violence, South Asia/Sri Lankan diaspora, and/or disability, but is accessible and useful to people from many different communities and identities.
Long official bio:
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a Worcester raised, Toronto matured, Oakland-based queer Sri Lankan writer, performer and teacher. She is the 2009-10 Artist in Residence and part-time professor at UC Berkeley's June Jordan's Poetry for the People and the co-founder and co-artistic director of Mangos With Chili, North America's only touring cabaret of queer and trans people of color performing artists. She is a 2009 commissioned performer with Sins Invalid, the national performance organization of queer people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. Her one woman show, Grown Woman Show, has toured nationally, including performances at the National Queer Arts Festival, Swarthmore College, Yale University, Reed College and McGill University. The author of Consensual Genocide, her writing has appeared in the anthologies Yes Means Yes, Visible: A Femmethology, Homelands, Colonize This, We Don't Need Another Wave, Bitchfest, Without a Net, Dangerous Families, Brazen Femme, Femme and A Girl's Guide to Taking Over The World. She is finishing her second book of poetry, Love Cake, and her first memoir, Dirty River and is happy about the forthcoming publication of The Revolution Starts At Home: Transforming Abuse Through Community Accountability, which she co-edited with Ching-In Chen and Jai Dulani, by South End Press in 2010. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, focusing on creative nonfiction and community-based teaching by writers of color.
Performance:
Poetry and performance: I'm available to do a one-hour (or shorter) set of spoken word performance.
One-woman show:
Grown Woman Show is Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's fearless, sexy and powerful one-woman show about being a long-term incest survivor and a queer woman of color negotiating love, family and heartbreak. In Grown Woman Show, Leah traces one year in her life as she leaves her long-term white partner and returns to finding love and trouble in a series of new lovers of color- while simultaneously attempting to reconnect with the family she hasn’t talked to in a decade. Blending hilarious and heartbreaking storytelling, performance poetry and South Asian ritual, Grown Woman Show explores the ways in which we heal from sexual abuse and transform legacies of violence in our lives, and the ways in which queer people of color love at high stakes. Grown Woman Show examines delicate butch/femme inter-community dynamics and the complexities of walking towards justice and accountability with a family that is both loving and violent. In the tradition of Dorothy Allison's Two or Three Things I Know For Sure, Grown Woman Show asks: What do we do with the violence we've survived once we're grown?
Time: 60 minutes
Tech needs: Analog or digital slide projector, projection surface, raised stage, light and sound board. Works well in small to medium theater/performance spaces
Target audience: LGBTIQ, survivors of violence, women of color.
Fits well with: Take Back the Night, Love Your Body Month, Pride, International Women's Day.
Workshops:
Secrets, stories, scars, survival: Writing your dirty laundry and living to tell.
Length: 2- 3 hours, customizable.
Teaching Artist: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Writing and telling our stories is an important part of surviving violence for many folks who've lived through it. But when we sit down to write down our stories, the process often feels more complicated and treacherous than we thought it would be. How do we write about trauma when we freeze every time we try? How much do we tell, and where? What the line between writing for therapy and writing for performance? How do we risk telling complicated stories of violence and survival within our communities that we worry will be misunderstood? And how do we do all of this without everyone including ourselves getting triggered?
In this workshop, we'll talk about ways to create safety to write and speak; look at examples of diverse ways writers have chosen to write about violence and abuse and everything that comes after; do some somatic body exercises to create safety and embodiment while we write; and do some writing and performance exercises!
Story Keeper: Writing and Performance for women of color and or LGBTI people of color.
Length: 2-3 hours, customizable
As people of color and/or queer and trans people of color, we have a lot of fabulous stories- love affairs, survival stories, running away at 14, being the only queer Sri Lankan femme in our industrial New England town. Most of our important stories are community secrets, dirty laundry, and the stories our families or lovers whisper, then say they’ll kills us if we tell. Our role as artists and cultural workers is to be the holder and teller of stories. In this workshop, you’ll have the chance to think about how to tell them. . We’ll talk about issues of disclosure and safety (ie, how to do all this without your friends and family killing you,) read and listen to amazing work by queer and trans artists of color who’ve walked this road, do some writing exercises and talk about all the millions of ways there are of documenting our amazing lives and just how important it is to do so.
Needs: Butcher paper, pens, post it notes, bowl.
The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting and Dealing with intimate violence in activist, queer, people of color and other small communities
Partner abuse within queer, politicized communities is a dirty secret and a difficult issue to deal with. Many people face complicated choices in dealing with abusive partners, from hesitancy about using the criminal justice system because of racism and homo and transphobia to the difficulty of dealing with community disbelief when our abuser is a beloved figure within our queer, trans, people of color or other activist community. In this workshop, we'll talk about the nitty-gritty issues of partner abuse/ domestic violence within our communities and discuss community accountability strategies that can help us walk towards building accountability, justice and violence free zones in our lives.
Length: 2-3 hours
I'm also available to
Needs: Butcher paper, pens, private space.
Some notes about my workshops:
Pre-registration is good. The top end for the number of folks I can teach on my own is about 20, though I'm open to figuring out workshops that are open to more. 30 is my absolute limit.
Water, a flip chart and pens/ paper are great things to have on hand. Snacks are good too.
If I need to copy materials for the workshop, it's easier, if possible, if I can get them to you to be copied prior to the event- let me know if you can do this.
Please ensure that the workshops and performances are held in wheelchair accessible space. Ask participants to refrain from wearing scented products in order to make the performance accessible to people with environmental illness and chemical sensitivities. If you can, offer childcare- just ask folks who need it to preregister, and get volunteers to hang with the kids. Please make sure the space is open to all-ages.