Zemula Barr is an artist and curator originally from Portland, Oregon. She recently graduated from the Master of Public Art Studies program at the University of Southern California and co-curated Work After Work at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture’s Mackey Garage Top Space. She has also worked on curatorial projects for Orange County Museum of Art, Workspace and RAID Projects.

Ann Cvetkovich is Ellen C. Garwood Centennial Professor of English and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism (Rutgers, 1992) and An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (Duke, 2003). She has been editor of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies and co-edited (with Janet Staiger and Ann Reynolds) Political Emotions (Routledge, 2010). Inspired by Public Feelings groups in Chicago, Austin, and New York, she is finishing a book called Depression: A Public Feelings Project (Duke, forthcoming).

Vaginal Davis is an originator of the homo-core punk movement and a gender-queer art-music icon. Davis has been a prolific producer of club performance, video and Xerox-produced ‘zines, and other forms of antagonistic low-cost, high-impact work.

Jennifer Doyle is the author of Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire (University of Minnesota Press, 2006). She is currently working on art, gender and sports, and teaches at the University of California, Riverside.

David Frantz is an independent curator and art researcher based in Los Angeles.

Judith “Jack” Halberstam is Professor of English, Gender Studies and American Studies and Ethnicity at USC. Halberstam is the author of four books including Female Masculinity (Duke University Press, 1998). Halberstam recently published The Queer Art of Failure (Duke University Press, 2011) and is now working on a short book tentatively titled Gaga Feminism. Halberstam generally writes on gender variance, subcultures, popular culture and visual culture and has published in both academic journals like Social Text and GLQ as well as more popular venues like Bitch Magazine and The Nation.

Onya Hogan-Finlay is a Canadian artist and curatorial programmer living in Los Angeles. Her practice examines gender, feminism and historical narratives through collaborative means and social engagements. She is a co-founder of the project MOBILIVRE – BOOKMOBILE project, and a member of the Third Leg and After Party collectives. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, the US and Europe and her drawings have been appeared in LTTR, Randy, C Magazine, The Younger Than Jesus Artist Directory, and Documenta Magazine No., 2 2007 LIFE! catalogue among others.

Mia Locks is an independent researcher and curator based in Los Angeles. She has a Masters in Public Art Studies from USC.

Catherine Lord is Professor of Studio Art at the University of California, Irvine. She is a writer, artist, and curator whose work addresses issues of feminism, cultural politics, and colonialism. She is the author of two text/image experimental narratives, The Summer of Her Baldness: A Cancer Improvisation (University of Texas Press, 2004), recently translated into French as L’Ete de Sa Calvitie, and Son Colibri, Sa Calvitie, Miss Translation (L’une bevue, Paris). Her critical essays and her fiction have been published in Afterimage, Art & Text, Artcoast, New Art Examiner, Whitewalls, Framework, Documents, Art Journal, GLQ, X-tra and Art Paper, as well as the collections The Contest of Meaning, Reframings: New American Feminisms in Photography, The Passionate Camera, Hers 3 Space, Site and Intervention: Issues in Installation and Site-Specific Art, Decomposing, The Art of Queering in Art, WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, and En Todas Partes: Politicas de la Diversidad en El Arte. Her work as a visual artist was included in the 1995 inaugural of Site Santa Fe, and has been shown at the New York Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Post Gallery and the Thomas Jancar Gallery (Los Angeles), the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, among other venues. She is currently collaborating with Richard Meyer on a book titled Art and Queer Culture, 1885–2005 (Phaidon Press) and a text/image project titled, The Effect of Tropical Light on White Men.

Richard Meyer is Associate Professor of Art History and Fine Arts at the University of Southern California, where he also directs The Contemporary Project, an initiative to forge new dialogues between the academy and the art world. His book Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth- Century American Art was awarded the Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Outstanding Scholarship from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He recently completed two books: Art and Queer Culture, 1885–present an illustrated survey co-edited with Catherine Lord (Phaidon Press) and a short history of 20th-century art in America titled What was Contemporary Art? (MIT Press).

Ulrike Müller is an Austria-born, New York-based artist whose practice encompasses both art making and community organizing. Her work, which can be seen as an extension of feminist movements from the 1970s onward, utilizes text, performance, publishing, as well as drawing and painting to create spaces of excitement and humor. Müller studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria, and participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, New York. Recent solo exhibitions include the Cairo Biennial (2010), Steinle Contemporary, Munich, Germany (2010), and Artpace, San Antonio, Texas (2010). Her work has been included in many group exhibitions, including Ecstatic Resistance, X Initiative, New York, New York (2009–10); Sonic Episodes: An Evening of Audio Works, Dia Art Foundation at the Hispanic Society, New York, New York (2009); 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2008); and Unmonumental Audio at the New Museum, New York (2008). She has been a member of the queer feminist collective LTTR, is the editor of Work the Room. A Handbook on Performance Strategies (OE/b_books, 2006), and currently serves as faculty for the Vermont College of Fine Arts’ low-residency MFA in Visual Art program.

Dean Spade is an Assistant Professor at the Seattle University School of Law and the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law (South End Press 2011).