Speakers

Joan Nestle

Joan Nestle is the author of A Restricted Country (1987); A Fragile Union (1998); editor of Persistent Desire: A Fem-Butch Reader (1992); co-editor with Naomi Holoch of Women on Women 1,2 and 3 (1990, 1993, 1995) and The Vintage Book of International Lesbian Fiction (1999); with John Preston, Sister and Brother: Lesbians and Gay Men write about Their Lives Together (1995); with Clare Howell and Riki Wilchins, GenderQueer: Voice from Beyond the Sexual Binary (2002).

She is the Co-Founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, 1973 to present.

Joan was born in the Bronx in 1940, came out in Greenwich Village butch-fem bars in the late 1950s in Manhattan, USA; she is a veteran of many liberation movements all still needed, and now lives in Melbourne, Australia with her partner, international human rights activist and teacher, Dianne Otto and Cello - a little dog with the most amazing heart.

To the Lesbian Lives conference Joan says:"For over 50 years I have been in love with revolting bodies, their histories, their touch, their questions, their adversities and their possibilities of trans border, trans generational hope. Come talk with me."

Ali Smith

Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962 and lives in Cambridge, UK. Her novel The Accidental was named the 2005 Whitbread Novel of the Year and shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize, and the 2006 Orange Prize.

Emma Donoghue

Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue did a PhD at Cambridge before moving to Canada where she lives with her partner and two children. She writes lesbian literary history (Inseparable; We Are Michael Field; Passions Between Women), plays for stage and radio, fiction both historical (Slammerkin; Life Mask; The Sealed Letter; The Woman Who Gave Birth To Rabbits) and contemporary (Stirfry; Hood; Landing, and most recently the Man Booker longlisted Room).

Emma's talk was co-hosted with the independent bookshop City Books in Hove.

Rose Collis

Rose Collis is a critically-acclaimed writer and historian who has lived and worked in Brighton since 1997. Her work includes biography, journalism, short fiction, website content, exhibitions, radio, literary talks and her own brand of historical guided walks, ‘Walkie Talkies’.

Since 1985, her journalism has appeared in over 30 publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Mail On Sunday, The Independent, The Times, TV Times, Gay Times and Time Out.

Her books include Coral Browne: ‘This Effing Lady’ (Oberon Books 2007); Brighton Boozers (Royal Pavilion, Museums and Libraries 2005); Colonel Barker's Monstrous Regiment: A Tale of Female Husbandry (Virago 2000 & 2001); and A Trouser-Wearing Character: The Life and Times of Nancy Spain (Cassell 1997 & 1999). Her latest book, The New Encyclopaedia of Brighton (2010), has been an enormous success, with a reprint being ordered within a fortnight of publication.

Davina Cooper

Davina Cooper's research for the past nine years has addressed innovative and experimental social spaces that seek to actualise alternative understandings of freedom and equality. She is currently writing a book based on this research, which focuses on reading concepts through 'everyday utopias', for Duke University Press. Since 2004, she has worked at the University of Kent as a Professor of Law & Political Theory, and from 2004-2009 directed the AHRC Research Centre for Law, Gender & Sexuality. Her earlier books include: Challenging Diversity: Rethinking Equality and the Value of Difference; Governing out of Order: Space, Law and the Politics of Belonging; Power in Struggle: Feminism, Sexuality and the State; and Sexing the City: Lesbian and Gay Politics within the Activist State. In the 1980s, she was active in lesbian feminist and Labour Party politics, and from 1986-90 was a member of Haringey Council, closely involved in its developing lesbian and gay equality agenda.

Caroline Gonda

Caroline Gonda is a Fellow and Director of Studies in English at St. Catharine's College, Cambridge. Her publications on literature, gender and sexuality include Reading Daughters' Fictions; 1709-1834: Novels and Society from Manley to Edgeworth and two co-edited books, Queer People: Negotiations and Expressions of Homosexuality 1700-1800 (with Chris Mounsey) and Lesbian Dames: Sapphism in the Long Eighteenth Century (with John C. Beynon), as well as essays on lesbian literature, theory and criticism. With Chris Mounsey she runs the biennial Queer People conferences held at Christ's College, Cambridge. She is currently working on a study of lesbian narrative possibilities in fiction from the eighteenth century to the present.

Sarah Franklin

Sarah Franklin is a cultural anthropologist and feminist scholar who writes on new reproductive and genetic technologies, including cloning, IVF, stem cells, and embryo transfer. Her most recent book is Dolly Mixtures: The Remaking of Genealogy (Duke University Press, 2007).

Reina Lewis

Reina Lewis is Artscom Centenary Professor of Cultural Studies at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London. She is author of Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel and the Ottoman Harem (London: IB Tauris, New York, Rutgers, 2004), and Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation (Routledge, 1996). She is editor, with Peter Horne, of Outlooks: Lesbian and Gay Visual Cultures (Routledge, 1996); with Nancy Micklewright, of Gender, Modernity and Liberty: Middle Eastern and Western Women’s Writings: A Critical Reader (IB Tauris, 2006); and with Sara Mills of Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader (Edinburgh University Press, 2003). Reina Lewis is series editor with Teresa Heffernan of the book series Cultures in Dialogue (Gorgias Press 2007), which brings back into print critical editions of travel writing, memoir and autobiography by Ottoman and Western women travellers and writers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Reina Lewis is also founder and hostess of Tart women’s salon, a quarterly event fostering women’s creativity and providing a warm environment for political and cultural debate.

Extracts from Reina’s new project on 'New Trends in Muslim Style', can be seen in ‘Veils and Sales: Muslims and the Spaces of Postcolonial Fashion Retail’ in Fashion Theory 11: 4 December 2007, and ‘Marketing Muslim Lifestyle: A New Media Genre’ in Journal of Middle Eastern Women’s Studies, Autumn 2010.

Reina Lewis is also Principal Investigator of a new research project, 'Modest Fashion: Faith-based Fashion and Internet Retail'. Funded by the AHRC-ESRC Religion and Society Programme, 'Modest Fashion' studies the growing market for modest clothing among women of the three Abramic faiths: Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

Other forthcoming publications include, The Poetics and Politics of Place: Ottoman Istanbul and British Orientalism, co-edited with Zeynep Inankur and Mary Roberts, Istanbul: Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation 2011.

Campbell

Campbell is an award-winning filmmaker who has written/produced/directed Stud Life, an urban queer feature film which is currently in post-proeduction.

Campbell’s films include the award-winning BD Women (1994); Viva Tabatha (1996) and Paradise Lost (2003). She made Broken Chain (2008) a BBC/Film collaboration. Other titles include the award-winning Legacy (2006) which explores the lasting impact of slavery on Black families and Fem (2007), a butch homage to queer femininity.

Campbell’s body of work was honoured by the Queer Black Cinema festival in New York in March 2009. 'Image, Memory and Representation' was a retrospective of her work which was programmed at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival 2007.

Campbell curated 'No Heroes' as part of the Progress Reports 2010 at Iniva which also screened at the Red Cat Arts Centre in Los Angeles 2010. She was invited to programme the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival 2004 – 2005. She was also the festival director for 'The Fire This Time!' – Queering Black History Month 2006 which focussed on the work of queer artists of colour for Black History Month.

She has written and published short stories and articles on film, sexuality and gender for Diva Magazine, Feminist Review, The Pink Paper, Critical Quarterly, Chroma Magazine, BFM Magazine, Luxonline and BFI Screenonline.

Campbell was Sound Mixer for The OWLS (2010) directed by Cheryl Dunye; DoP on For Cultural Purposes Only (2009) directed by Sarah Wood; Bend It (2008) directed by Jules Nurrish; Camera for feature films Do I Love You? (2002) And Tick Tock Lullaby (2007) directed by Lisa Gornick.

Louise Carolin

Louise Carolin is the deputy editor of DIVA, the UK's best-selling monthly for gay and bi women.

Izzy Kamikaze and Marie Mulholland

Thirty years a-growing?

Two life-long activists, Izzy Kamikaze and Marie Mulholland (one North, one South) reviewed three decades of lesbian activism in Ireland and invited participants to join them in teasing out what lies ahead.

Izzy Kamikaze is an activist, social entrepreneur and loudmouth, and has been midwife, wet nurse or nanny to various unruly LGBT baby groups since 1982. She has survived many purges, splits and upheavals, only to do it all over again. Her latest love-child, together with her lover - the poet and activist Hayley Fox-Roberts - is Northwest Pride which has recently brought 500+ LGBT people and friends to the streets of a small town more than 100 miles from the nearest gay bar.

Marie Mulholland is an activist, author and rights advocate from Belfast, now living in Dublin. Despite Peace in the North and civil partnerships in the South of Ireland, she believes it has never been more important to revolt.

Heather Peace

Heather Peace is an actor and musician from Bradford. She has starred in London's Burning, Ultimate Force, The Chase and most recently, as DS Sam Murray in BBC Three drama, Lip Service. In 2010 Heather was placed in the top 40 of the Independent on Sunday's annual 'Pink List' of the 101 most influential gay and lesbian people in Britain today. She undertook her first ever full UK tour with her own band and material in March 2011, with her first studio album set to follow. Heather returned to Glasgow in spring 2011 for the filming of series 2 of Lip Service.