Genderqueer and Other Gender Identities: A Reading and Discussion

A reading and discussion with PEN Center USA, featuring:

Buck Angelis an American trans man, adult film producer and performer, and LGBT icon. He is also founder of Buck Angel Entertainment, as a vehicle to produce media projects. He received the 2007 AVN Award as Transsexual Performer of the Year, and works as an advocate, educator, lecturer, and writer. Buck serves on the Board of Directors of the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance.

Sarah B. Burghauser is a Bay Area writer who holds an MA from Oregon State and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts, where she has also taught. Sarah has worked with Semiotext(e) Press in Los Angeles and has been awarded fellowships with the Lambda Literary Foundation, The MacDowell Colony, and Vermont Studio Center. She has published with A Café in Space, the Anaïs Nin literary journal, and Kirkus Media. Her essay “Learning To Be In A Skin” appears in the anthology, Queer Girls in Class: Lesbian Teachers and Students Tell Their Classroom Stories (Peter Lang Publishing Group 2011). Currently, she works on a collection of poetry that explores the ways familial myth and history affect the body.

Jenny Factor is an archaeologist of object and mind; she is also a feminist, a mother, and a dog-lover. Her poem collection, Unraveling at the Name (Copper Canyon Press), won a Hayden Carruth Award and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Factor’s poems and reviews have appeared in more than a dozen anthologies, including Poetry 180 and The Best American Erotic Poems (Scribner, 2008). Her work has been supported by an Astraea Grant in poetry. Jenny Factor received her MFA in Literature from Bennington College, and her B.A. in Anthropology from Harvard College. She serves on the Core Faculty at Antioch University Los Angeles, the only MFA program with a dual focus on literature and the pursuit of social justice.

Jiz Lee has performed in porn for over 10 years, with more than 200 projects from six countries spanning independent, queer, and hardcore gonzo pornography under their belt. They are the recipient of multiple AVN and XBiz Award industry nominations and Feminist Porn Awards. Jiz has presented most recently at Princeton University, the American Studies Association Conference, and Wonderlust Helsinki (awarded by the Finnish Association for Sexology), and have read at University of Toronto (Ontario), Writers with Drinks (SF), Radar’s Banned Books (SF), Pegasus Books (Berkeley), among others. They’ve been featured on MSNBC, Fox News, and proudly, LifeHacker. Jiz works behind the scenes at Pink & White Productions (CrashPadSeries.com, PinkLabel.tv) and fundraises for LGBTQ and sex worker-focused organizations through their erotic philanthropic art project, Karma Pervs. Their writing appears at JizLee.com and in the pages of The Feminist Porn Book, Genderqueer, Best Sex Writing 2015, Girl Sex 101, and their upcoming anthology, Coming Out Like A Porn Star: Essays on Pornography, Protection, and Privacy, among others. They are also the co-editor of the Porn Studies Journal Special Issue: Porn and Labour. When not working in porn, Jiz is training for an IRONMAN 70.3.

Born in Los Angeles in 1969, Dave Naz is a photographer whose work revolves around the varied identities and personae of our time. He has published seven books, and his eighth book, Genderqueer: And Other Gender Identities, was released to acclaim in 2014. Naz’s photographs are shown in galleries all over the world. His work has appeared in GQ, Maxim, Stern.de, and Salon.