During this year’s Lesbian Visibility Day of Action, the New Haven Pride Center strives to create a safe, welcoming and united space for all queer women, lesbians, and non-men!
The first 2022 Days of Action will take place April 24th, starting off with panel conversations, social events, and more! During this program we will be amplifying queer women/femmes behind New Haven’s DIY scene, highlight the importance of radical working class non-men and our solidarity, as well as celebrate the history of Zines and their come back as a creative means of sharing information and ideas. We hope you will join us in this celebration of queer women, lesbians, and femmes.
Statement on Inclusivity
We want to remind folks, that although this event technically falls under the “Women’s program” umbrella at the New Haven Pride Center, we will be accompanied by nonbinary, gender nonconforming, and agender folks, as well as people from all over the spectrum that is queer sexuality and gender identity. If you feel you belong at NHPC’s women’s programs, you do!
Goals of the Lesbian Visibility Day of Action:
- Bring together LBGTQ+ women and non-men within the community and listen to their unique experiences.
- Amplify the voices of LGBTQ+ women and non-men within the New Haven DIY scene.
- Highlight the importance of radical working class non-men and our solidarity.
Meet the Program Curator
Suyane Oliveira
Women’s Program Curator
Questions? Contact her here
Thank You to Our Sponsors & Partners
Schedule of Events
Opening & Welcome
April 24 | 10:00a (EST)
Join us for our opening session of our Day of Action in honor of Lesbian Visibility Day. This day will be focused on uplifting non-men voices in the New Haven Community as well as creating a welcoming environment for all individuals within the queer community.
We will sit down with the New Haven Pride Center’s Women’s Program Curator, Suyane Oliveira, and a volunteer from our Lavender Lit Book Club to set the tone for this Day of Action.
Panel: Non-Men in the New Haven DIY Scene
April 24 | 10:30a (EST)
Our first panel of the day will feature organizers and creatives from New Haven who shape our queer DIY scene. We will talk about what DIY is and, more importantly, how it sustains our community. In this conversation, DIY organizers from Qommunity, Punq Noir Festival, East Rock House, and Connectic*nt come together to bring awareness to non-men in the New Haven DIY scene.
This panel will feature perspectives from Ashley LaRue, Zoe Jensen, and Marianna Apostolakis. This panel will be moderated by Women’s Program Curator Suyane Oliveira.
Panel: Radical and Working Class Queers
April 24 | 12:00p (EST)
In our second panel of the day, we are joined with working class and radical queers to talk about the work they do for our community.
We will be asking questions like “What is the working-class?” Though people’s worth is by no means connected to their day jobs, we want to highlight these people who are doing some really important work.
This panel will feature perspectives from River Ramos, a harm reductionist at APEX, and Mari Correira, a digital organizer for UnitedWeDream.This panel will be moderated by Women’s Program Curator Suyane Oliveira.
Workshop: Lez Make a Zine
April 24 | 2:00p (EST)
Join us for a two-hour zine making workshop with zine maker Aly Maderson Quinlog! Come learn how zines were introduced to queer culture and how they were used as tools during the AIDS epidemic. Then, scissor your way through making your very own mini zine! All necessary materials will be provided.
This is an introductory workshop. You do not have to be experienced in order to make a zine with us!
This workshop is sponsored by the New Haven Pride Center and is FREE to attend. Limited to 12 participants.
Keynote: Kai Van Vlack
April 24 | 5:00p (EST)
This year’s Lesbian Visibility Day keynote speaker is Kai Van Vlack. This conversation between Suyane and Kai will be centered on the importance of a DIY framework in regards to community building and radical organizing.
Together, we will be diving into working class queer history while tying a ribbon around Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues. From queers in punk to organizational work, we will explore topics that are rarely given a platform. You won’t want to miss the insights Kai has to offer!
Film Screening: Walk With Me
April 24 | 12:00p (EST)
Based in Brooklyn, NY, Walk With Me is an indie film in the truest sense. Filmed in four one week intervals over the course of a year with a micro-budget and a lot of love, Walk With Me is an intimate, beautiful film that follows the story of a young mother who leaves her husband to make her own way in the world and stumbles unexpectedly into love with another woman.
Following the screening, join us for a director, editor, and writer Isabel Del Rosal as well as film star Devin Dune Cannon and songwriter Amanda Walther. Conversation will be moderated by Trans Program Curator Finn Lockwood.
U-Haul Her to Happy Hour
April 26 | 6:00p (EST)
Come hang out and celebrate Lesbian Visibility Day with the New Haven Pride Center’s Women’s Program Curator, Suyane, and our community of lesbians and LGBTQ+ women in New Haven!
U-Haul Her to a Happy Hour will take place at Three Sheets at 372 Elm St in New Haven. Come hold space with us and grab food, drinks and celebrate each other.
This event is FREE to attend!
Art Opening: It’s Complicated
April 27 | 5:30p (EST)
Join us for an art opening at the Chez Est (458 Wethersfield Ave, Hartford) in Hartford featuring artist Lari Freeman.
In this series of paintings, entitled “It’s Complicated,” Lari provides the viewer with an invitation to reach your own conclusions about what the compositions may portray. Art has the power to challenge, energize and restore. Moving through these past months, many challenges have presented themselves. Emotions not very familiar to us have visited our deepest inner selves. Striking color, perceptible composition and faint and fearless strokes walk you through some of these most complicated moments.
Meet the Speakers & Artists
Ashley LaRue (she/her)
Ashley LaRue is a New Haven native and local creative. Ashley is a sex-education teacher by day, and artrepreneur. She hosts contests and events while engaging the queer creative community through Qommunity, an organization founded in 2020. Ashley is passionate about the arts, creative expression, mental health and wellness and creating safer spaces for queer artists in the Greater New Haven area.
Zoe Jensen (she/they)
Zoe Jensen is co-editor of Connecticunt Magazine, a bimonthly zine featuring only ct artists. She also DJs as DJQT and can be found playing monthly at Conspiracy Bar in Middletown. She graduated from UConn in 2020 and has lots of bakery recommendations at a moment’s notice. She lives in New Haven.
Marianna Apostolakis (they/them)
Marianna Apostolakis is an organizer and founder of East Rock House, a queer / trans run art organization that features queer / trans musicians, poets, artists, and vendors. East Rock House was created in 2021 with the goal of promoting queer / trans community in Connecticut while also unifying local artists through curated shows, live recording sessions, open mics, and community events. Marianna’s interest in the DIY scene and community organizing is undoubtedly influenced by their time working in a women’s history archive and studying queer memoir, cinema, and theory as an undergraduate.
River Ramos (they/them)
River Ramos is a trans non-binary, neurodivergent queer with eclectic passions. River is a multimedia artist, harm reduction and mental health advocate, avid forager, and proud cat parent of 3. They direct the Harm Reduction & Prevention Services at Apex Community Care serving much of western CT. River is immensely excited to start their Master’s in Public Health program at Johns Hopkins University in June, a once in a lifetime opportunity to work with leaders in Harm Reduction around the world.
Mari Correia (she/her/ella)
Maria Izaura Botelho Correia aka Mari is a queer, undocumented writer and digital organizer. At the age of four, she migrated with her family from Galiléia, Minas Gerais, Brasil to the stolen lands of Amerikkka – where she has been undocumented since. Mari’s experience as an undocumented young person in Amerikkka ignited a flame within her to fight for systemic change. And after graduating high school in 2018, Mari became a youth leader with her local immigrant rights organization — Connecticut Students for A Dream (C4D). From 2018-2019, Mari was actively involved with C4D and fulfilled many roles including Danbury youth organizer, UndocuPeer trainer, Summer program leader, and Digisquad member. Mari’s community organizing in CT soon led her into a bigger movement space. And in October of 2019, she began her journey as a full-time Digital Organizer with United We Dream (UWD), the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the nation. Through her local and national immigrant rights’ work, Mari hopes to inspire young undocumented people to reimagine a future without borders and fight to abolish all systems of oppression. A future where all oppressed bodies are liberated from the systemic chains that bound us – so we are allowed to live and thrive beyond borders.
Aly Maderson Quinlog (they/them)
Aly Maderson Quinlog is a Queer artist, poet, educator, and organizer who lives along the Connecticut shoreline. Mx. Maderson Quinlog teaches Cyanotype and Zine Workshops throughout New England and opened Magik Press Studios, a micro press specializing in artists’ books, zines, and intimate editions, in New London, CT in March of 2019. www.magik.press
Kai Van Vlack (they/them)
Kai Van Vlack is a musician, organizer, and educator. She is the programs and operations coordinator at RIOT RI, an artist in residence at the Dirt Palace, and a member of the band Trophy Hunt. She aims to share her experience and perspective as a gay Quechua woman at the intersection of working class, punk, and queer history and use it as a framework for empowerment, community building, and action.
Amanda Walther (she/her)
Amanda Walther is a Juno nominated singer-songwriter and award winning composer from Toronto, Canada. She has spent most of her career as half of folk-roots duo Dala; touring throughout North America for over 18 years. She has shared the stage with numerous artists including Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens, Jann Arden, Tom Cochrane, Stuart McLean of the CBC’s Vinyl Café and has performed in countless festivals like the New Orleans Jazz Festival and the Newport Folk Festival. Dala’s PBS Special ‘Girls from the North Country’ earned Amanda a Canadian Folk Music Award and a Juno nomination.
Amanda is also the singer in piano/voice duo Dizzy & Fay, performing original songs that echo timeless standards. Her songs have been featured on numerous television shows in North America and most recently she has written the complete soundtrack for Brooklyn indie film ‘Walk With Me’ for which she was awarded Best Female Composer at the Toronto International Women Festival.
Isabel del Rosal (she/her)
Isabel del Rosal is a writer, director and editor who after making two short films, took some time off to raise and homeschool her children. Isabel runs her own business creating video content for entrepreneurs, small and large businesses alike. After finding a balance between her personal and professional life, she wrote and directed two seasons of the comedic web series “Smile for the Camera”. “Walk With Me” is her debut feature film and labor of love.
“Walk With Me” has won the Spirit Award and Best Actor at Brooklyn Film Festival 2021 and Best Emerging Director at Manhattan Film Festival 2021, Best LGBTQ Feature at Lady Filmmakers Film Festival, Best Feature at NY International Women’s Film Festival, Best Female Composer at Toronto Int’l Women’s Film Festival and screened at BFI Flare.
Isabel is looking to start production fall of 2023 on her next film, SEEN, a supernatural drama.
Devin Dune Cannon (she/her)
Devin hails from Rochester, NY where she knew fairly early in life that she had a passion for performing. At age 7 when she was cast in a commercial for Wegmans, the beloved upstate New York grocery franchise, her job was to eat a cookie on camera and “pretend” to love it. And so she did. And realized rather quickly that she was very good at that.
Outside of performing and directing, Devin is one of the resident teaching artists with Strangemen Theatre Company, which brings “Actor As Creator” workshops to universities around the country. It is her intention to leave students with the necessary tools to devise their own work. Being a part of new productions from the ground up is a true passion for Devin, and it is her goal to inspire artists young and old, to be brave, to enter the creative community with a collaborative spirit, and to motivate them to get in a room with generous, like-minded individuals… and simply play.
Lari Freeman (she/her)
New Haven CT based designer Lari Freeman is not concerned with convention in her approach to art. “The Golden” series uses discarded papers, textures and materials, along with vibrant oil pastels. She views it as abstract thinking, entering into the golden years.
Lari’s methods characteristically involve adventurous techniques as well as methods developed from a seasoned career in graphic design. Her grounded sense of composition and design has been established throughout her midwestern upbringing. She views her world in color and design, drawing inspiration from her studies in Los Angeles and the greater NYC area.