Our Curiosity Club is turning into Queeriosity Club for Pride month
We're going to find out what happens when 10 LGBTQ+ people and allies stop being polite and start getting curious.
We're kicking off Pride month with a queer twist on Curiosity Club.
On Thursday, June 6 our Queeriosity Club crew will head over to The Impact Hub for our community event featuring author, LGBTQ+ activist and all-around renaissance woman Jodie Patterson and transgender activist and pioneer Spencer Bergstedt. ($5 tickets are still available! RSVP here.)
Then, the following evening on June 7, our Queeriosity Club will reunite at The Cloud Room for a nerdy dinner party. Like our original Curiosity Club, our dinner conversation will be fueled by five KUOW stories that club members will explore ahead of the dinner and two of the journalists who reported the stories will join us. For Queeriosity Club, all of the featured stories will center LGBTQ+ themes.
It's like a queer bookless book club.
Our guiding question for Queeriosity Club is the same as for the original Curiosity Club: Can surprising stories and great food transform a group of strangers into a community?
Curious about who's in the club? Meet our KUOW Queeriosity Club crew below and follow along in the experiment at KUOW.org/curiosityclub and on social media at #KUOWCuriosity.
Our fabulous 2019 Queeriosity Club members are:
Ginger Chien is a storyteller who shares tales of life, love and being around the country from the perspective of a transgender woman of color. She's an advocate for and teacher of diversity and emotional intelligence and the collaborative creativity it fuels. She's a cell phone engineer and prolific inventor with about 50 sole and shared patents. And she's a musician in a transgender rock band, who has seen the power of shared experiences and authenticity open hearts in the most unexpected places.
Keri Zierler is an internationally awarded Creative Director and writer on the global advertising team at Amazon. In 2018, Keri was #36 on DapperQ’s list of 100 Most Stylish DapperQs. Before earning her BFA in Advertising at Art Center College of Design, she studied acting and musical theater. Keri won her first (and only) amateur boxing match by TKO, and she still has her membership card to the official Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fan Club. Find her on Instagram and Twitter @kerizierler.
Jennifer Hegeman is a dog owner and Navy veteran. She works as a teacher-librarian at a suburban public high school, where she has taught for 29 years. However, for the first 23 of those years Ms. Hegeman was Mr. Hegeman. In 2014, Jenny transitioned from male to female. Today, Jenny identifies as a transsexual female. She describes her transition as “an arduous yet magical journey causing a complete metamorphosis of Self.” Jenny is especially curious about the unknown unknown; she loves researching, conversational digressions, and inqueery based learning.
Timothy Bardlavens is a Product Design Leader at Zillow Group, a Cultural Strategist and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) consultant. At Zillow, he leads product strategy and design for Zillow Offers, consumer experiences. As a consultant, he specializes in Organizational Culture through the lens of Human-Centered Design, helping business leaders create people-centric strategies to increase diversity, retention, innovation and revenue. Timothy also is an international speaker and facilitator.
Christine Cox is a native Houstonian who always felt like the Pacific Northwest was meant to be her home. She moved to Seattle in 2017 and works remotely for an academic journal that focuses on gender and economics while also working at a web and marketing company. Christine is passionate about research, a little bit obsessed with the plants of the PNW, and is now getting her hands dirty in pottery class.
Mellina White Cusack writes about how politics and culture impact our society. She blogs at The Seattle Conservative and has contributed her thoughts locally to The Evergrey, KUOW, and others. She is curious about why our country has grown more and more divided in recent years, and what it will take to bring us back together again. In the past, Mellina has also written about queer fashion for DapperQ. Most recently, she served as Campaign Director for Christopher Rufo for City Council.
Amanda Carter Gomes is a Midwestern native that has been living in Seattle since 2002. She spent much of her early career working in marketing, event management and photo shoot production. In 2013, Amanda was recruited to join the team of an online publication as Managing Editor and subsequently took over the site in 2015. In 2017 she created The Fold to fill a void in online publications focused on women beyond the millennial range. Amanda lives in West Seattle with her husband, two boys and pup, Clementine.
Dacia Clay is Assistant Program Director at Classical KING FM and is the creator, host, and co-producer of the Classical Classroom podcast, a show she recently brought with her to Seattle from Houston Public Media. She’s also a host, music writer, and interviewer for KING’s new music project and radio station, Second Inversion. When she’s not trying to figure out how to use recording equipment, she likes to run, write, and figure out how to use outdoors equipment.
Jeffrey Howard is Editor in Chief of Erraticus. He's a former mental health professional and educator, now exploring questions surrounding the decline in community and civility, how individuals create meaningful lives, and how we can better navigate a post-religious world. He's an earnest nature-bather, captivated by Romantic landscape paintings. Jeffrey has made Cascadia his home since 2016. You can find him on Twitter @Jeffrey_Howard_.
Thank you to The Cloud Room, our KUOW Curiosity Club partner. The Cloud Room is a stylish co-working community and bar that’s enriched by the people who occupy it.
Update 6/11/2019 2:00 p.m.: After publishing this story, a member of our Queeriosity Club was unable to participate. We have removed his bio to avoid confusion.
