words and story

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Outfluenced: An Evening of Queer Storytelling live storytelling event, Chapel Hill, NC

At this point, most of you may know me as an anti-trafficking professional. I love this work, I love advocating for increased survivor engagement, and I feel like the best movements are led by by people who are impacted by the issue. I value harm reduction, public health approaches, and advocating for non-carceral options to make sure we’re serving the needs of the broadest number of folks.

But I’m also a writer and storyteller who loves words.

Words are imperfect. With them, we attempt to take lived experience, abstract knowledge, and searing points of universal awareness, filter them through the synaptic cosmos inside our skulls, and generate a word-experience that replicates our truth for someone else’s consumption.

It’s an imperfect art with an imperfect medium.

As a multipotentialite creative, nerd, oddball, and activist with a variety of interests and influences, I bring whatever word-gifts I have to a diversity of settings, from live storytelling performance to conference presentations, prose-poetry to academic writing, instructional manuals to creative imagery and guided visualization.

International Human Trafficking and Social Justice Conference, Toledo, Ohio

I’ve told stories at live events such as Outfluenced: An Evening of Queer StorytellingSex Ed Storytelling, and Smut Slam DC, and presented at state and national anti-violence conferences. I’ve trained activists, advocates, direct service providers, tutors, teachers, and medical professionals on best practice and violence prevention. I’ve authored and co-authored journal articles, social work commentaries, practice manuals, and local government bulletins as well as love letters, prose poetry, memoir, spiritual reflection, birth and parenting guidance, and generative theological discourse. I’ve been interviewed for podcasts and radio for my professional and academic expertise as well as my lived experience with violence, trauma, sex work, human trafficking, gender, and sexuality. I’ve facilitated workshops and trainings on consent, sexuality, boundaries, accountability, storytelling, writing, spirituality, and self-care.

Teaching  consent at PlayThink Music and Flow Arts Festival, Berea, Kentucky

I am happiest when working at the intersections of multiple interests, with multiple mediums, in spaces that allow for creativity, expansive thinking, and laser-focused synthesis of seemingly-divergent (yet fundamentally related) concepts.

See my portfolio of professional work.

Read my most recent CV.

Find me at upcoming appearances.

Read more of my occasionally rambly thoughts.