CiTR

Carolyn Hays (she/her) is an award-winning, critically acclaimed, bestselling author who has chosen to publish "Letter to My Transgender Daughter" under a pen name to protect the privacy of her family.

Self-aware and intimate, Letter to My Transgender Daughter asks us all to love better, not just for the sake of Hays’s child but for children everywhere enduring injustice and prejudice just as
they begin to understand themselves. Letter to My Transgender Daughter is a call to action, an ode to community, a plea for empathy, a hope for a better future. It is a love letter to a child who has always known exactly who she is—and who is waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.

Her novels have been published by Hachette, Simon and Schuster, and HarperCollins; her books are also widely translated. Letter to My Transgender Daughter has four overseas editions, including those by Picador UK and Flammarion in France.

Her past books have been listed as New York Times Notable Books of the Year and Kirkus’s Best Fiction of the Year, and she's written for National Public Radio, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, Salon, and The Advocate. Letter To My Transgender Daughter will be released in paperback on October 31, 2023 from Blair. Visit the website for more at www.carolynhays.com
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KRISTIN CHEUNG (she/her) is the Executive Director at the Community Arts Council of Vancouver (CACOV). She is passionate about working with and supporting the work of under-represented communities. She has a Masters in Arts Administration & Cultural Policy from Goldsmiths University of London.


The CAVOC presents the annual Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival, offering visual and performing artists facing social exclusion and other barriers opportunities for exhibition and sales, performance and participation, connection and learning. VOAF is Canada’s first and only festival for Outsider Art, which is represented by significant fairs and museums globally. The Outsider Arts Festival is running October 12th – 17th at the Roundhouse Community Centre, visit www.voaf.ca for programming and more details.

BRANDI MARS (she/her) is one of the featured artists at this year's Outsider Art Festival, and her collection of art includes over 350 pieces aiming to bring representation to the LGBTQIA+ community. Since 2016 Brandy has been growing a unique, funny, LGBTQ greeting card and art company in Vancouver, and her art can be seen in Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Netflix to name a few prime locations. What began on the floor in the corner of her living room as an extension of her blog has now become a thriving small business, a business that began as an extension of a blog I started when I came out in 2014. The blog became very popular with over 100,000 views in a year and a cathartic way for me to connect to the LGBTQ community. Visit www.brandimarsdesigns.com
Outsider Arts Festival is running October 12th – 17th at the Roundhouse Community Centre, visit www.voaf.ca for programming and more details.