who we are
Founder and curator, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
About
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (she/they) is a nonbinary femme disabled writer, curator and disability and transformative justice movement worker of Burgher and Tamil Sri Lankan, Irish and Galician ascent. They are the author or co-editor of nine books, including (with Ejeris Dixon) Beyond Survival; Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement, Tonguebreaker, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, and Bodymap. A Lambda Award winner who has been shortlisted for the Publishing Triangle five times, they are Lambda’s 2020 Jean Cordova Award winner “honoring a lifetime of work documenting the complexities of queer of color, disabled and femme experience” and a 2020-2021 Disability Futures Fellow. They have co-created many performance Raised in rustbelt central Massachusetts and shaped by T’karonto and Oakland, their new book, The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs is forthcoming October 2022. brownstargirl.org
Board of Advisors
The Board of Advisors are all disabled, Deaf or neurodivergent BIPOC artists, organizers and activists. They provide essential support to the Curator/ Founder around cultural, political and community-specific issues, helping them address challenges when they emerge and providing support as Living Altars grows.
Sandy Ho
Sandy Ho (she/hers) is an Asian-American disabled community-organizer, activist, and policy researcher. She was born, raised, and educated in Massachusetts. Sandy is the founder of the Disability & Intersectionality Summit and claims residence in three communities: disability, queer, and Red Sox nation..
Dorian Taylor
Dorian Taylor (he/his) is a Black trans disability justice activist, paralegal, creator and adaptive athlete. Originally from Houston TX, he currently makes his home in the Pacific Northwest, where he is the Disability Specialist at King County, WA’s Office of Equity and Social Justice. He is the creator of the Black Queer Disabled History series and a longtime disability activist in Black/trans/queer communities.
Rev. Elena Rose Vera
Rev. Elena Rose Vera (she/her), a Filipina-Ashkenazi trans woman originally from rural Oregon, joined Trans Lifeline’s executive team in May 2018. A longtime organizer, educator, and performing artist, she holds an M.Div. focused on social justice and community care work and was ordained as a minister by the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, a historic civil-rights church in San Francisco. Vera is a founding member of the Transgender Roundtable at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Berkeley and the Speak! Radical Women of Color Media Collective. She also co-curates the San Francisco National Queer Arts Festival performance series Girl Talk: A Trans and Cis Women’s Dialogue. As a performance artist, Vera has performed at the Fresh Meat Festival of Transgender & Queer Performance,, Queer Rebels and Mangos With Chili.
LIVING ALTARS 