Tourmaline - Nov. 12th, 2014

Wednesday Reading Series Reina Gossett is the membership director at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project as well as the 2014-2015 Activist-In-Residence at Barnard College’s Center for Research on Women. Reina is a filmmaker collaborating with Sasha Wortzel to write, direct and produce STAR PEOPLE ARE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE, a film detailing the lives of Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P Johnson and Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. The film builds upon the archival research and published writing she has done over the past decade about Sylvia Rivera and STAR , published in Captive Genders (AK Press, 2011), The Scholar and The Feminist Online and her personal blog: reinagossett.com. Reina was a 2009 Stonewall Community Foundation Honoree as well as a recipient of the George Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship by the Open Society Foundation to work with LGBT people navigating criminalization. During her fellowship she partnered with Critical Resistance to curtail the prison industrial complex by organizing low income LGBTGNC New Yorkers in a campaign that successfully stopped NYC’s Department of Corrections from building a $375 million new jail in the Bronx.