About Us > Bios

Who We Are

Meet our Fabulous Staff

Laura holds a Ph.D. in Integral Philosophy with a focus on peacemaking from California Institute of Integral Studies.  She has recently retired as Faculty Emerita from the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies at San Francisco State University after a long career of coordinating the Therapeutic Recreation classes/program there and previously at San Jose State University.  She is a committed social activist, organizational consultant, mediator, published author, and artist. Learn more about Laura here.

Associate Project Director: Jill Lessing

Memorial Quiltmaker: Karen Hampton

I burn and stitch images and text into cloth to invoke voices of the past. Using re-memory I provide access for spirits to speak. My intent is to tell a different story of American culture. As I share and live these stories I also explore my own pain, wishes, and dreams for the future.” Learn more about Karen’s commitment to the project here, and visit Karen’s fabulous quilt-making website.

Marion Abdullah:  Co-chair 2010 Fabled Asp committee

Marion Abdullah is a longstanding LGBT activist.  She joined the Asian Pacific Lesbian Network, participated in women of color events, was involved in the inaugural meeting of Older Lesbians Organized for Change (OLOC), helped organize the Annual Elder Conference, volunteered with Women's Building and PFLAG, and is active in AIDS and breast cancer organizations. Working to ensure an elder presence in organizations such as East Bay Pride and Out in Oakland, Abdullah is considered an expert on aging issues. She is active in many organizations and is working on the Elder Committee for Creating Change, striving to improve conditions in the Bay Area. She also contributes to the LGBT Cancer Board, Lavender Seniors of the East Bay, the Mayor’s Roundtable of Oakland, Asian Pacific Queer Women and Transgender Coalition, is a member of AAL40+, New Leaf and is a survivor of breast cancer.

Morningstar Vancil:  Core Group

Morningstar was born in Cavite City, Philippines and her family ancestry is Asian (Filipino), NativeAmerican (Mohican tribe), and Black Negritos (African). Morningstar came to the United States to gain political asylum in 1984, after the assassination of Benigno Aquino in 1983 and the start of the popular uprising now called People Power. She left the Philippines to resist the Marcos administrationʼs policy of civil disturbance and use of the military to quell citizen dissent. Morningstar has been an advocate for People of Color (POC) in the areas of immigration, human

rights, domestic partnership, and tribal alliance-building. She has been clean and sober since 1991. She served as a volunteer for the Two-Spirit Groups' Archives of the LGBT Historical Society, spoken on POC panel discussions, and co-founded ForS/mWoC, an organization dedicated to creating an equal and harmonious relationship among the S/M communities. She is a member of Kreatibo (a queer-pinay performance troupe), Butch Magic (a drag king troupe), FatBottom Revue (Big Burlesque), and Neshkinukat, a coalition of Native American artists in

Northern California.

Morningstar is a founding member and former officer of the Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits and serves on the LGBT Advisory Board of the Human Rights Commission (City of San

Francisco) and is presently LGBT board member of American Cancer Society. She is life-partnerto Rae Suber. She is also recovering from gynecological cancer, diagnosed in 2003, and has

been very active in creating community for lesbian survivors of this disease.

Cathy was an activist in the Southern Freedom Movement of the 1960s and received a Ph.D. in Sociology from Tulane University. In the 1970s she participated in the Women’s Liberation Movement and began photographing the Bay Area lesbian community, including lesbians with disabilities. In the 1980s she was lesbian mothering, and in the early 1990s she worked for an international wheelchair project. Learn more about Cathy here, and visit her gallery on the web.

Resident Poet: Barbara Ruth

Others in our core group:

Mira Ingram is indigenous (Blackfeet), butch, disabled, a former drag king, and a lifelong activist, drawing connections between -- and fighting -- many forms of oppression.

Syndy Sharp is a Fat, differently abled Butch dyke living in Oakland. She is currently working on a book of poetry about Kink, disability and sexuality.

Patty Overland (soft butch) is a suicide survivor and paraplegic from Bronx, N.Y.  She has been writing since she was 16, co-founded Wry Crips disabled women's readers theater with Laura Rifkin and Judith Smith.

Dominika Bednarska, femme,  is a Doctoral student in English and Disability Studies at the University of California Berkeley.  Her writing has appeared in What I Want From You: An Anthology of East Bay Lesbian Poets, Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity and most recently in the Bellevue Literary Review.  

More info about our media crew, curators and consultants coming soon!