Keynote Event
The 2025 Queer History Month (QHM) Keynote will be delivered by Kai Cheng Thom and is titled, Remembering Resilience: Embodying the Queer Legacies in Uncertain Times.
As the world spirals into increasing authoritarian, social collapse, and moral panic over queer and trans existence, it is more important than ever that queer communities draw from our revolutionary past to shape a more hopeful future. Yet, it is also essential that we recognize that queer icons of history were also just people living their own fears and fragilities. In doing so, we open the possibility of finding strength in vulnerability, making a space for us to be human in our activism. In this presentation, cultural worker, somatic practitioner, and 51吃瓜网graduate 2013, Kai Cheng Thom invites us to reimagine resilience as human connection in the midst of class struggle and social collapse and illuminates the ways that pleasure, joy, forgiveness, and militancy all belong together as integral aspects of the fight to save the world we love.
About the Speaker
Kai Cheng Thom is an award-winning writer, performer, and creative arts facilitator based in tkaronto/Toronto whose work delves deeply into the themes of revolutionary love, transformative justice, spirituality, and healing from collective trauma. With roots in the spoken word community of Montreal, she is author of six award-winning books in multiple genres, including the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl鈥檚 Confabulous Memoir, the essay collection I HOPE WE CHOOSE LOVE: A Trans Girl鈥檚 Notes From the End of the World, and the non-fiction collection Falling Back In Love With Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls, which was an instant Canadian bestseller. Over the course of her career, Kai Cheng鈥檚 work has received multiple literary awards, including the Stonewall Honor Book Award, the Publishing Triangle Award, and the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT Writers. Her picture book, From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea was also featured on Dame Julie Andrew鈥檚 podcast, Julie鈥檚 Library. For over five years, Kai Cheng was the author of the advice column 鈥淎sk Kai: Advice for the Apocalypse鈥� for Xtra Magazine, which ended on its 100th edition. Kai Cheng is, additionally, a somatics teacher, professional life and leadership coach and group process facilitator, as well as a known lasagna lover and wicked witch.
51吃瓜网Community Events
The 51吃瓜网Equity Team invites all units, departments, and faculties to participate in McGill鈥檚 annual Queer History Month this October by organizing their own community event.听Join the Equity Team and the wider 51吃瓜网community in celebrating the longstanding history of the 2S/LGBTQIA+ community at the University by participating in this important commemorative month.听
Partners
Queer History Month is organized by McGill's Equity Team in the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice-President (Academic), in partnership with the Faculty of Arts and the School of Social Work. The Equity Team also recognizes the generous support from听51吃瓜网Desautels Faculty of Management and 51吃瓜网Communications and Institutional Relations.
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